Oklahoma's Number One Attraction! A national

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3 OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE STATE OF OKLAHOMA OKLAHOMA FEATURES PAINTING THE TOWN For Hominy artist Cha' Tullis, his home town is his canvas. He's painted more than a dozen giant Native American murals; he's shooting for fifty. By Stephen Berg,photopaphs by Gary Lawson 14 THE GHOST ROAD Ghost towns that were bypassed, sidetracked, outdone, and bankrupted-and that deserved to die. By Suzette Bmer, photographs ky Thresa A. Brag a few 20 THE PRETENDERS 36 what would make a sane person sleep in a tent in the rain, play dead, and wear wool underwear? Living history buffs tell all. B.7 Maura McDemott, photog~aph~ Dmid Fitzgerald, RichardSmith, and Fmd W. Mamt/ FOOTBALL'S UNREPENTANT REBEL 48 The life of one-time OU halfback Joe Don Looney played out like a Roman candle: unpredictable, brilliant, and over far too soon. By Miche/ Wa//is, i//ustrafioon Gi/Aduttis Page 14 Pa ONE ON ONE 4 IN SHORT 7 LETTERS 8 OMNIBUS Crowning Oklahoma, I?y Barbara Prrlner 10 PORTFOLIO 28 FOOD Wine Country, by Debra Robinson 56 WEEKENDER Taylorsville, by Sharon A. Wright 61 ENTERTAINMENT CALENDAR 63 COVER: The cavalry impression created by historical reenactor Jim Hamilton of Guthrie is so convincing, he's appeared in the movie FaratzdAway and the mini-series "Son of the Morning Star." Photograph by Dmid Fitzgera/d. September-October1992

I INE ON 0 * 98 Affordable Rooms & Suites * Nonsmoking & Handicap Rooms * Free Local Calls * SatelliteTV * Coffee & Donuts r Room rates begin at $29.00daily Suites $32.

4 I INE ON 0 * 98 Affordable Rooms & Suites * Nonsmoking & Handicap Rooms * Free Local Calls * SatelliteTV * Coffee & Donuts r Room rates begin at $29.00daily Suites $32.00 daily or $140 weekly Take Exit 108B Turn right on 24th Avenue Fax OKLAHOMA cm ORTHODOX CHURCH OCTOBER 16TH, ITTH, 18TH ElE53-Z FESTIVAL HOURS FRI: 10:30A.M. - 10:30P.M. SAT: 10:3OA.M. - 10:30P.M. SUN: 11:OOA.M. - 7:OOP.M. i3zrjz 5T.GEORGE GREEK ORTHODOX CHURCH NW 145TH STREET & PENNSYLVANIA CALL FOR MORE INFO. + l + l + l + l + ~ + ~ + l ~ In Search of Myths and Legends Stories here at Oklahoma Today charging me by the minute. Thirty minoften start with one per- utes later, I was still in my chair reading. son fascinated by an idea, a When I finished, I had that heart-tugging person, or a thing. If that person feeling you get when you've read a great can gather so many details, anecdotes, story. I didn't even resent the surcharge and facts about his fascination that he can at the daycare center. It was money well make the rest of us begin to go "oooh" spent. I hope you'll feel the same way; and "aaah," too, it's usually just a matter Wallis's profile of OlJ's unrepentant of time before the story finds its way into rebel can be found on page 48. an issue plan. Two of our other regular contributors Never has that been more true than were on journeys of their own. While with this issue. Contributing,- editor Michael Wallis has been 3 a rare byline in the magazine the + past two or three years, mainly because he has been busy on the lecture and media circuit promoting his two most recent books, Route 66:TheMother Road and Preng' Bo-y:TheLifeand Times of CharlesAfihurl o When the Tulsa writer is at home and reachable, he's been hot on the trail of his latest project, a biography on Cherokee Chief Wilma Mankiller. To be honest, it has been darn hard to find a magazine story that will pull him away from the typewriter. But Joe Don Looney, Sooner football's all-time bad-boy, is nothing if not a fascinating personality. And Michael Wallis recognized that the first time he heard about the former All- American. In fact, Wallis got so mkgmdacy Looflc~. caught up with the man behind the myth that he not only went to the Wallis was digging into the depths of a lonely spot where Looney crashed his man'ssoul, Suzette Brewer of'l'ulsa was motorcycle and died ("I felt compelled," out sifting through dry facts for the human stories behind ghost towns, and confides Wallis),heactually had thestory all signed, sealed, and delivered before Maura McDermott of Checotah was any of us even knew who the handsome traveling through time (figuratively) with halfback was. history's passionate guardians-reenactors. It wasn't hard to see where his enthusiasm for the article came from. Two In this issue, we also welcome Rlaura years later, I can still remember the first McDermott as a contributingeditor. We time I read the manuscript. It was five know you'll enjoy hearing from her more o'clock, and I had thirty minutes to pick regularly. up my children before the nuns started Jeanne M. Devlin Oklahoma l'oday

Standing Rock Development Eufaula, Oklahoma 74432-9442 (91 8) 689-7600 A PRIVATE MOUNTAIN COMMUNITY ver three miles of blue water Division Ill offers even more spectacular setlakefront and over seven

5 Standing Rock Development Eufaula, Oklahoma (91 8) A PRIVATE MOUNTAIN COMMUNITY ver three miles of blue water Division Ill offers even more spectacular setlakefront and over seven miles of tings for these magnificent views of the commanding mountainside and mountain forest, cliffs, bluffs and enormous mesatop homesites with 200 to expanse of Lake Eufaula's blue water! Visit us, 460ft. of frontage. Carefully thought and know that you will not be pressured to buy through restrictions and roads dedicated to land. If there is to be any selling, you will sell the Home Owners Association assure privacy. yourself in your experiencing the splendor of These hand-tailored, topographically-defined Standing Rock. You owe it to yourself to visit settings, each an this 20 year labor of ever changing, three- love-and ten percent dimensional painting, of self-referred sales will elicit awed responses. be paid into our Home Can you place your- Owners Association. self in this picture? Please contact us today Our newly opened for an appointment. We Offer the Horizon, Eas Massey, Developer-Agent

6 Home Away From Home" I. LexingtonInn- locatedin the heart of Waco, ideal stopover when travelingthroughtexas. Within walking distanceof Baylor University, Texas Ranger Hall of Fame, Brazos River Queen and Dr PepperMuseum. Friendly courteousstaff. Complimentary continentalbreakfast. Childrenunder 16 stay free. Spacious rooms featuringdouble-or king-sizedbeds. Other Lexington locations include: Amarillo, Austin,Dallas, El Paso,Fort Worth (DFW-West), Houston, Irving (Dm-East),Odessa, Oklahoma City, San Antonio and LEXINGTON*INN 115 Jack Kultgen Waco, Texas Fax Interior design By Judy Eden Contemporary-Traditional-Native American-Ranch Antique & Decorative Designer Fabrics, WallcoveringsTreatments OKLAHOMA rndn David Walters, *!' * a ' Pzlblshed by the Ok/ahoma Tozlrism and Remation Departmnt Berl Schwartz Publisher Jeanne h.1. Devlin Editor Steven N'alker, Walker Creative. Inc. Art Direction Barbara Palmer. Associate Editor Melanie hlayberry. Circulation hlanager Brian C. Brown, Marketing hlanager Lisa Rreckenridge, Administrative Assistant Pam Poston, Subscription Services Pam Fox, Accounting Steftie Corcoran. Copy Editor Contributing Editors Hurkhard Bilger, RI. Scott Carter, Rlaura hlcdermott, Ralph hlarsh, and hlichael Wallis Tourism and Recreation Directors James C. Thomas, Acting Executive Director David Davies, Deputy Director, Parks Kristina S. hlarks. Planningand Development Kathleen hlarks, Travel and Tourism Steven hleyers. Administrative Sewices Tom Rich, Resorts Berl Schwartz, Oklahoma Today Tourism and Recreation Commission J. Patrick Bark, Chainnus Jack RIildren, Lt. k. Sweet Pea Abernathy C. Coleman Davis Linda A. Epperley Charles S. Givens Donald L. Benson Ray H. Quackenbush hlichael D. Tipps Oklahot~oToday (ISSN ) is published bimonthly in January, hlarch, hlay, July, September, and November by the Oklahoma Tourism and Recreation Department. 401 \\'ill Rogers Bldg.. P.O. Box Oklahoma City, OK (405) or (ROO) Subscription prices; $13.50/yr. in U.S.;$18.50/yr. outside. 1i.S. copyight O 1992 by Oklahonza Todaj magazine. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. The magazine is not responsible for unsolicited material for editorial consideration. P/.it~r~d 01 PP///IllPI1PI~III~II~, Tulsn b% &!!:",?.?SL" oru*ou. W(IE*II = -- Second-classpostage paid at Oklahoma City. OK and addicional enrr).offices. Postmaster:Send addresschanges to OklahornoTodnjCir~.nlatiun.P.O. Box 53384, Oklahoma City. OK Oklahoma Today

$Hoof- When Kids Meet It For Homecoming Most Stillwater folks, and most Oklahoma State alumni, know the streets paper, and wire oversized Pistol Petes (OSLJ's mascot) for sound and nlo\,eof this$

7 Hoof- When Kids Meet It For Homecoming Most Stillwater folks, and most Oklahoma State alumni, know the streets paper, and wire oversized Pistol Petes (OSLJ's mascot) for sound and nlo\,eof this university as well as they know ment-it's enough to make Walt Disney their own driveways. Yet every October proud. some thirty thousand of them bundle the kiddies in coats, strap a leash on the dog, and put sole to campus street. The phenomenon is known as the Homecoming Walkaround, in part because it happens on the eve of the OSU Homecoming Football Game, but also because participants, literally, wa/k around the campus. The purpose of their stroll: taking in Like everything else in college life. however, there's a deadline. In this case the hammers stop at dusk on October 23. 'l'he walkaround begins at 6:30 p.m. sharp. If history is any indication, after a night of strolling Greek Row and consuming cider and baked goodies, twentyfive thousand hardy Cowboy fans will haul themselves out of bed on Saturday in time to find a the dorms. cha~els. and good curb seat for the? 1, Greek houses decked mu's Honrecotning OSLJ Homecoming in homeconling finery. LVulk(~roz/nd:n sign fhutfall Parade, which kicks off at The weeks prior to hu-~i~a'eed~rric~ed. 9 a.m. at 12th and Main the Friday night ritual are spent in what could only be called a decorating frenzy. Students dig holes for and ends about 11 a.m. at the threshold of Lewis Field. Oh yes, the :football game against Iowa frame posts, plug chicken wire with crepe State starts at 2 p.m. -JMD Cowboys It was a precipitous drop fro111 Ho~vdy Doody, who signed off singing "Be kind to animals, they think you'rc grand. Be kind to animals, they'll lick >-our hand." to the Garbage Pail Rids. "Howdy Doody and \\'estern mo\-ics instilled very, very long-lasting values," says Dana Sullivnnc of the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. "That's something we would like to see happening today." So on October 17 and 18. the Hall is hosting a children's co\vboy festi\.al to kick off the Ho\vdy Pardners Club for \vould-be straight shooters. Small f n aged six to twelve can learn to swing a rope, handle a (cold) branding iron. and saddle and bridle a horse. Or they can ride in a horse-dra~vn wagon, pose with a real co\vboy, n-atch a gunfight and a medicine show, and feast on trail-worthy grub. Pardners who pay fiftccn dollars in dues will receive a membership lapel pin and other goodies, including a quarterly magazine Hog4 Porhtt~!.filled n-it11 Western storics, games, puzzles. and cowboy poetn. For more information, call the Hall in Oklahoma City at (405) BP by Any Other Name... As the hundredth anniversary of the 1893 Cherokee L Run approaches, northwest Oklahoma is gearing up for a year-long party. From now until next September, from Enid to Laverne, Cherokee Strip parades, festivals, t-shirts, and banners will pop up like cowboy hats at a rodeo. There's one small problem, points out Anita Judd-Jenkins, a reader from Wichita, Kansas. They're using the wrong name. The correct name for the area opened by run on September 19, 1893, is the Cherokee Outlet. The Cherokee Strip is a separate piece of land, two and forty-six hundredths of a mile wide and 276 miles long, now in Kansas. The Strip came into existence when the area laid out by a survey made in 1837, delineating the Cherokee Outlet (land given to the, "%:~ '- \ -... *-,, 1' 1: 5-ir- > : n!+,". $ +* bf-1**4*u~ y** -?'' " r '.,? 6117;.%;T;,;.-<.....TvF. Cherokees as an "oudet" to the west), and a survey made in 1854, fixing the southern border of Kansas, overlapped. Both Kansas and the Cherokee tribe claimed the land until 1866, when a treaty ceded the land to the U.S. The land was sold; the profits bought LJ.S. bonds for the Cherokees, and its residents became Kansans. The Outlet, a rectangular piece of land 57 miles wide by 226 miles long, belonged to the Cherokee tribe until "Very early in the history of the area, people began referring to (the Outlet) as the Cherokee Strip," says Kay Bond, curator of the Cherokee Strip Museum in Perry. When the museum was organized, its founders used the popular name.. -;. i \+% /: Along with thc Perry museum, other misnomers are the Cherokee Strip Museum in Alva and the Rluseum of the Cherokee Strip in Enid. The Top of Oklahoma Historical Society's Cherokee Outlet Illuseum in Blackwell, howel er. is properly monikered. "Glad to hear it," says guide Craig Paxron (e\-en Paxton slipped and called the Outlet the Strip. though he caught himself). The Cherokee Strip hluseum in Arkansas City. Kansas, is actually on land that was once part of the Cherokee Strip. In 1893, Arkansas City \\-as a registration point for the Run. so much of the museum's collection is about (what else:, the opening of the Cherokee Outlet. -BP September-October1992

Letters SHARING THE WEALTH Although your Oklahoma Today has been a beautiful magazine, the May- June issue of 1992 exceeds everything you have ever done.

8 Letters SHARING THE WEALTH Although your Oklahoma Today has been a beautiful magazine, the May- June issue of 1992 exceeds everything you have ever done. I need additional copies to send to some of my friends (some are formerly from Oklahoma). Thank you. C. George Younkin Arlington, Texas ABOUT THAT MAP... When we commissioneda watercolor map of Indian County (May-June 1992), our intention was to loghistoric Native American landmarksandsites on a map sanshi&ways, interxtates, and county section roads--not to mention river dams. With no map like it to parrot, we found the going rou&. Ultimately, we reconciled ourselves to heard from some of you. And mzuch ofthat input was itzcolporateditz a poster verxion of the map recently printed b~om. We hope to hear from more ofyou... andsomeday to Arne infomation to do a trulycompnhensive?nap of Oklahoma's /ndian Coutztry. THANKS, BUT... Upon studying the Map to Indian Country, I was startled by the omission of one of the oldest towns in Indian Territory-Vinita. Vinita was established in years ago. Several pre-statehood schools were begun in Vinita: the Worcester Academy, Sacred Heart Academy, and Willie Halsell College. Vinita was home to Tom Buffinton, chief of the Cherokees. Please put Vinita back on the map. Lynnda Sooter Vinita...AND WHAT ABOUT leneringa map wehope wil.serueas a starting The cultural blind spot about real pointin a ~ong~erdued~~~1ssion-j~~~tnative what Americans robs all of Oklahoma and where and how many places tied to ow culture. Native American past do still exist here? I did want to correct a couple of your Already, as the letten below indicate, we've entries in the magazine. Although there are over fifteen thousand archaeological sites recorded in the state of Oklahoma, the only site open to the public is the Spiro Mounds Archaeological Park. The Spiro site was used between 600 to 1450 A.D. Spiro park is located north and east of the town of Spiro, not west as indicated on the map. Dennis Peterson Spiro Sites were placed in their approximate location, because the fhid nature of waten-olorx makes it n'rficult to squeeze long names and symbols into sman areas. We apologizz for atzy conjkssion this??lay have caused ANOTHER NOMINEE My father and mother were employed in Oklahoma by the Indian Service as it was known in the late teens and the early 1920s. My father was engineer, carpenter, electrician, plumber, and, you might say, handyman. My mother was chief cook and bottle washer and seamstressshe made all the girls' dresses and undergarments, all the boys' shirts and trousers and underwear. Oklahoma Today

I didn't notice their latter school on the map. It no longer exists and was abolished in 1922. It was called Cantonment and was located on the northwest part of what is now Canton Lake.

9 I didn't notice their latter school on the map. It no longer exists and was abolished in It was called Cantonment and was located on the northwest part of what is now Canton Lake. It was a school for the Cheyenne-Arapaho tribes. The last time I was at the old school site there was only one building in service. It was the old office building with the school's doctor's office in the west end. Some years ago on a trip to Canton Lake, I visited the site, and that old office building had been hit by lightning, gutted by fire, refurbished, and made a museum. Just thought I'd pass this on to you for whatever it is worth. Maybe someone might like the yarn. Bill Pappan Norman We liredthe yarn, andso we dzeckedon the building, on4 to learn it now houses the ChyenneandArapaho HeadStafi Program, (405) With its natiuestone facade and windows of hand-blown glass, "It's still very prrty, "says Ruth Dowd ofthe Canton Chamber of Commm. The building is located fwo miles west of S.H. 51, then two miles north on a road Ouch! Since we were gining general marked "To Canton Lake." locations of sites, we used on/y a few TO BE PRECISE... prominenttown nama. In hindri@t, knowing the grave was actual4 in Fairfax, we shod I was pleased to see the mention of have at least put it southwest of Pawhuska, my great-great grandfather Osage Chief not northeast. Ne-Kah-Wah-She-Tun-Kah in the June issue of Okhhoma Todq. SIN OF OMISSION However, he is not buried in I extremely enjoy the magazine each Pawhuska but in the cemetery at month, but am a little confused this Fairfax, twenty-eight miles ) month. In the extreme northeastern corsouthwest of Pawhuska in ner of the state on the map, you show Osage County. seven small tribes. You show the Peoria, His grave is marked with 8 Quapaw, Ottawa, Eastern Shawnee, a life-sized statue, a photo of 5 Modoc, Wyandotte, and the Seneca, but which is enclosed. Anyone you do not show the Miami. wishing to visit the grave I know it is impossible to reprint the should go to Fairfax, not magazine, but I just wanted to let you Pawhuska. know that you left out a Great Nation, I am glad to see Oklahoma Todq publish- David L. Olds ing more articles and pho- Second Chief tographs on subjects per- Miami taining to Native Americans. Oklahoma, after At&ke time tht&en ran fre in this all, means "land of state, the Miami were part of the the red man." Quapaw Confdmaq. The Miami t~be Cidney J. Bledsoe The Chief at rest in has been a& to the poster venion of Jenks Faaf$@x. the map. September-October1992 9

11 Crowning Oklahoma To Dome or not to Dome? ith her dl;veshair and pink cheeks, Caroh Gdn lsloks like the lm permn in the rmm to s,& up coau6v&- But stir she has, ever since am dter~m~1987 jj~ when hex musiags on the Russian &urehes she aw ia Mmeaw and a suay thought ab~mthe term gold^ aldies?' GO=binad with the fowe of inspiration, A phrase came to her: The golaen domem, Rex generatiw, sa;e &aag'h'tshozlld tap r>fftheseventy-year-dd Itnesrooe In#sme mpttar aw&dl Lmt~8enIYZ 4a& 1YZ 7ir aqap&fz.eastqjdo@n#m@orlbonrrt C&. Tbmasmi~simwfint ki&ar&bsgpbe@~rto8 8 d h aut to &e sftc state c~picdin Oklahoma Gicy with a dame. And, given he emnanaie ic should be done stse capitols are dameless, including thehind of people who finishwhatt31q *th6~ s~repdhlg ddkl?~. thso in New Mmdco, Lmui&siana,and stmi'' Qwia andmhcr pr+hrs have Gwin put kdf on tke w d a 4a Nebmka. What is me, she says, brthat bianddtogether in morganiz$doawith meeting of rhe CapiaoI hervrution OkIaboma3s is the dycapittd that was a name that reflects their civic, as well.comminissi.an, which omrsees the inwnded ro have tdam and dmaoe. as areihu-ralh imntiaas. %'haycall c+pftdl's welibre. As she ouslined hm When the c&pitollwgs designed, ilts rhemselves nhe ~DOMEWS, fan Dedidream, cated Uklahocmns MershzIing Excel- ela~ed.theywai& kow of very few!eke Rallying spkit. ro,geet >the ideaofa dome wirh umi- "We lam the Nor everyone agrees that mous approvd. 8f $k?~$i!t? W ~ finid O ~kil" dame~essaas isbad. Ims.ead of failure, Gins m faund she awing about wit?sfofl. ccaunered Friday, an OkIdaoma City?* drat's mat on@ blthempid b a cra- weekly newspapea; the preent capitol dition rht goes back a1mw to swte- --Carol Gwkn represents fiscal respiami~biii~y. hood. At battn are twr,widely held "C3kIahorna's Capital is saying to the perceptions, fi@ k.ss beloved because b'luep~intsinducted an alternate phm worrld, the dome had no utilitarittn $heyare fdlse: far a dome (A&beled Alternate X fd he vdlhe, abd we hiid orher rfeeds more Myth Wamber Oaa: O!kI&homa'$ arc~wceuralspee$fic@rions), pressjag wi~hautaxing our people capit& is unique, bwuse it is thed y Flat-rtoppcsd, ohe capitol connotes moze." Evea rhoggh the current plat-! smte capitalwib~f a domee &iludei t3m-h says. "It daes not repre- doesn't can for tax dollars, &ere are Wramg, says Gwin. Eleven ~eher sent the kin$of people we are. We are b r &ngs $14 mi9yi~n mdd buy, the September-October 1992

This is how the proposedctome afzct the "'Haw01the utianoma?ls woum LOOK. 1 I ne 016 UC77ZLK 176 JIUNl UJ CIL~CUP~A Wuu,,. JtU.v.l Beginning in the 1920s, suggestions Domers, but we pass.

12 This is how the proposedctome afzct the "'Haw01the utianoma?ls woum LOOK. 1 I ne 016 UC77ZLK 176 JIUNl UJ CIL~CUP~A Wuu,,. JtU.v.l Beginning in the 1920s, suggestions Domers, but we pass." add a dome, it may be done without for additions that would top off the capitol and be functional abounded. In 1926, the board of affairs proposed that those columns could just as easily support office space as a dome. A drawing money. to its usefulness. What pro-domers see of a capitol with a seven-story tower on I top appeared in the Daily ORIahoman. The office tower idea surfaced again in the 1950s, grown to fifteen stories, and in the early 1960s a state senator suggested that a revolvingrestaurant spin atop the capitol. (More proof that truth is no stranger than fiction: among the capitol-topping suggestions in Jim dome, The capitol commission Lehrer's spoof Crown Ok/ahoma are a seems to have considered the that would support the casino, a neon sign flashing "Oklahoma dome to be as much of a po- dome.) "There was a time is Number One," and a telescope. A relitical football as later politi- when the addition of a dome volving restaurant was the fictional cians would. According to to a state capitol or other pub- governor's favorite.) 1915 minutes of the commis- [Jntil recently, professional as well as sion, the building that dence of sovereignty. But now public opinion has held out against the Samuel Layton designed was it is not any more an evidence dome. In 1964, an informal poll of one that does not "necessi- of sovereignty than a dress twenty architects turned in a vote of twenty to zero against the dome. That doesn't surprise Stillwater architect David Kulick. Most architects In 1926,the Daily Oklahoman rat1 this picture to shoal how the capiitol would look if the board of affairs got its way and topped the building with n seven-stoqi oofce toaler instead of a dome. Oklahoma Today

13 trained from the 1930s to the 1960s didn't believe in principles of classical architecture, he says. Function was everything. "If something was built for other than purely a functional reason, it was (thought to be) sort of hypocrisy." Since then, some architects have come to appreciate classicism again, praising its designs as humane and unifying. And proportionally, Oklahoma's capitol needs a dome, says Kulick. "One of the tenets of classical design is that every part relates to the whole." The way mass is distributed on the present capitol, "it's meant to carry something big." Domes are appearing again on drawing boards and in private projects, says Kulick, who has designed four domes, ranging from one for a house commissioned by insider trader Ivan Boesky to a glass dome topping off Eskimo Joe's in Stillwater. And as classical architecture has made a comeback, so have the craftsmen capable of doing the kind of masonry work a capitol dome would require. Twenty years ago, they would have been nearly impossible to find. "There h n 'tbeen a Zaqe-scab &ti dome done in th cozlnt7y in sixty yean. '" -David Kulick, architect Putting a dome on the state capitol would have national significance, Kulick says. "There hasn't been a large-scale civic dome done in the country for sixty years." It may be that the dome is an idea whose time has finally come. The DOMERS have an impressive list of backers, beginning with their honorary chairman, former U.S. joint chief of staff Admiral William J. Crowe Jr. The state Historical Society, a state chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and Cherokee Principal Chief Wilma Mankiller have all thrown their support in. The DOMERS, however, are still far short of their $14 million dollar goal. With approximately a quarter of a mil- September-October1992 lion dollars raised last summer, "It's only the very start of the beginning," says Gwin. They've spent most of their time, Gwin says, putting together a plan. Their strategy: the dome will be financed with individual donations, mostly from the sale of forty thousand ten-by-six-inch granite blocks. With each $250 donation, a block would be engraved with the donor's choice of name (no honorary or courtesy titles) and then be laid into a "Plaza of the Oklahomans" at the capitol's entrance. A series of round benches on the plaza would bear the names of corporate donors (the names will be inscribed to resemble a decorative frieze more than a billboard, Gwin promises). And the names of schools-public or privatethat sell as many t-shirts as they have students will appear on blocks that intersect the pink blocks. The name of everyone who makes a donation, however small, will be listed in a computer the DOMERS call the Locator, which will be installed in the capitol. Interestingly, the plan for financing the dome is similar in principle to one concocted by Charles N. Haskell, the state's first governor and one of the architects of the transfer of the capital from Guthrie. Haskell campaigned for Oklahoma City as the capital site with the slogan: "One-half million free capitol guaranteed." A 150-acre plot was donated for the site of the capitol; the half million (later adjusted upward to one million) was to come from the sale of lots around the capitol site. The State Capital Building company was duly formed, and lots went up for sale. Three years later, the second governor, Lee Cruce, had to press the company to make good on its promise of land for the capitol site. Instead of a million dollars, the sale of lots had only yielded $4, The two plans don't compare, says Gwin. "They were trying to make something. All we're doing is completing the capitol. "People may think they don't want (the dome)," she continues, but "when it's completed they will be so proud." -Barbara Palmer Getting There Oklahoma Clty An exhibit of photogrl~phs and dratwings of thir&tuyo state capitols assembled by the Atneriran I~lstitute of Architects will be or1 display at the southeast entrance of the state capitol from mid-october to Statehood Dq, Nowetnber 16. A model of the Oklahoma capitol with a dotne, mt/de by architecture students at the llnlueni~~ of Oklahorrta, is on permanent displa-v in the capitol rotunda along with an exhibit oa capitol architect Solomon Lqltot~. Toun of the capitol at LV. Lincoln aregiven smen days a tveek, from 8 a.tn. to 3p.m. HighliR/lts of the half-hour tours include the Snpreme Court room with taetz~-mo-rnraf gold illsets on the ceilittg, brorrw b~ists of the state's ~~et~ty-fourgoe,e~~tot~ (Waiters's bust hasn't beerr addedyet), and the famed historical mura/s. Before you go, you might cclant to pick up a c0p.y of the book Ship of State on a Sea of Oil ntthe State Histotical Society Museum gift shop (open from 9 a.m. to 4:.?17p.m. Monday to Frih; the book is $1). The book, airinen a former capitol tourguide, the late Hetlr?, F. Wade, contains a history of the capitol's construction a/orzg with descriptions of the capitol's architecture. Best, thoiqh, is the (undocumnented) gossip: stories about slylights a~here reporien hid to eavesdrop on senators and how state oflciais squeezm'a six-story buildi~tg out of legis/hn for a three-stor?, building. vyou dine in the recent!y rentodeled cnfetetia (it's in the basenze~zt arid doesn't rmolve), you t?zavfinnjlourself next to a represenfatiwe or senator, if the Legislature is in session. The cafeteria, renamed the Red Earfh Cafe anddecorated with posters from the Red Eat-t/r Notitle Americatr festival, is open Monday to Friday from seven a.m. to 2p.m. (Off-sessiotl, it r1ose.r an hour earlier.) For itlfomution about the P/aw of the Oklahomat~s andplans for the dome, call the DOjCfERS at (405) or (811O) 2\

14 ye- -,

16 The mural on the n od side of ClatldeS Grocery Store is a tribute to the ssigrtjfjcance oftfre color redto Native American nrltures. Tullis mixes some of his colors at home andhas them matched at the hardware stow, others he chooses fmm house paint samples. Visitors to his jewelry store in downtown Hominy (pop. 3,400) make bets on whether the silver mane is a wig, bleached, or just a fluke of nature. (For the record, it's the genuine article.) In recent months, however, the hair as conversation piece has been eclipsed by a series of murals by Tullis so great in number that they have necessitated a new moniker for the town itself: the city of murals. When Tullis answered a small ad for a mural artist in the Hominy Nws-Props in 1990, he really didn't expect it to come to this. The Chamber of Commerce was simply looking for someone to paint the images of three local landmarks (a 1904 rock schoolhouse, an Osage ceremonial roundhouse, and an M.K.T. depot) on the windows and transom of a downtown storefront for its observance of Homecoming '90, a statewide push led by then Governor Henry Bellmon to draw former Oklahomans back to their home towns to rediscover their roots. The newspaper ad was more of an expression of the seriousness of the project, than an actual call for portfolios. No one expected anyone but Cha' Tullis to get the job. He is, after all, Hominy's artist laureate, if only because he is also Hominy's only professional artist. Still, there were appearances to keep up. Everyone knew public art commissions involved negotiations. So negotiate they did. The Chamber made it known it was willing to splurge for both black and white oil paint. Tullis (although he had never done a mural before) made it clear he was underwhelmed by the size, the medium, and the color palette the Chamber had in mind. He would accept the commission only on one condition: the Chamber would allow him to paint a second mural down the street his way- Oklahoma Today

17 Japan was taking over the state." For the next few weeks Chamber fathers gave silent prayers of thanks that their last condition before okaying the second mural had been that it be painted on an abandoned building with no roof at the corner of Main and Wood. NIGHT WALKER In some respects, given Hominy's history, the only thing surprising about Tullis's mammoth Native American art project is that it didn't happen sooner. Hominy has from its inception been awash with Native American culture and the big dreams of men, both white and Indian, who could look at the area's thin rocky soil and oceans of tall grass and see not an agricultural wasteland but potential fields of deep oil reserves and acres of rich rangeland. Nhen the Osage arrived in 1872 in what is now Osage County, they had been relocated by the U.S. government no less than three times. They had purchased their new home on the edge of the Cherokee Outlet with money from the sale of their previous reservation in Kansas. In the area now occupied by in color, with house paint, using anative American theme (he is part Blackfoot), and of a size large enough to cover a wall twenty feet tall and forty feet wide. "I like to paint large. I like to paint bright," Tullis says in way of explanation. He also likes a big audience. That the city fathers agreed to Tullis's terms is not surprising-you don't thumb your nose at a water hole in the desert just because you don't like its shape. That they let him start on his big mural before he had commenced, much less completed, their smaller one says a lot about the inclusiveness of small town September-October 1992 trust-it extends even to a talented home-town son with a reputation for being something of a rebel. "I was a very active kid in high school," says Tullis with a laugh, "and probably there was a little reluctance to let me paint murals on the sides of town buildings simply because people knew me, and I had dated their daughters." The initial days of his painting did nothing to ease anyone's fears. "At first," recalls Tullis, "there was just a blue background with this orange dot (on the second wall), and there were all these stories (around town) from people who thought creeks, which theydubbed Ho-Mo-I in honor of a favorite chief by the same name. Ho-Mo-I translates as "Walks in the Night." Hominy is said to mean Night Walker. During those early years on the reservation, many died from a scarcity of food, medicine, and clothing. But by the early 1900s, the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas railroads had a route from Bartlesville to Oklahoma City that passed within shouting distance of Hominy. The Osage were earning a comfortable living from the lease of grazing lands, and the rights to their oil-rich tribal lands were still commonly held. They also employed a sizable portion of the white populace, which had grown from the original occupants of a nearby trading post. The railroads brought drilling equipment to work the oil fields and allowed the export of local wares like never before. Eventually whites pressured the government into forcing the Osage to sell the Hominy townsite, and it passed into the hands of men like Prentiss Price, Fred

18 The theme of the mural at itfain and Kagl streets is the transfr of culture from onegeneration to the next. TuIlis usedsix paint colors on each bead on the prayer fan and belt; he spc~~t thirq-six hours on the beadwork alone. Drummond, and John L. Freeman. It was incorporated as a town shortly after statehood. By the mid-1920s it had three banks, five theaters, four schools, a telephone exchange, and a country club. In 1907, its population was roughly 468. By 1925 its citizens numbered five thousand, and the Osage had banked more than $24 million in revenue from oil and gas leases. Twenty years later the Osage's oil and gas income was $300 million; it would take the Great Depression to push both town and tribe into a long symbiotic decline. in 1975 his home town was by no means a ghost town, but it was not an economic hub of the state anymore, either. MayberryR.F.D. in cowboy boots comes more to mind. By December of 1977, about the time Tullis returned home from junior college in Paris, Texas, with a degree in jewelry design and a new name, Cha' (pronounced like "hay"), the 18 last freight train had pulled out of the local depot. A person could still buy a good chicken fried steak and get a burr haircut in Hominy, but residents were driving to Tulsa to make life's larger purchases. What transportation giveth, it also taketh away. Tullis can understand a stranger's bemusement at a young man, a jeweler at that, deciding to make Hominy home. Thirteen years later he still can't explain why Hominy has a hold on him, but then he points out roughly half of his graduating class of eighty still lives in Hominy, too. Go figure. One of Tullis's theories: "It's just small-town life, dude," he says in a dialect more redolent of Southern California than southern Osage County. "It's just that closeness that the community has, where you know everybody, and everyone knows you, and you know who your kids' teachers are," and some of your kids' teachers are kids that you went to school with. When Tullis first returned to Hominy he had to drive to Pawhuska to ply his craft. After working a few years at Leroy White's jewelry store in Pawhuska, Tullis bought his boss out and rode high off the county's mini-oil boom in the early 1980s; in 1982 he added a shop in Hominy, and when the Pawhuska location burned in 1983 on the heels of the oil bust he consolidated his jewelry business in Hominy. It took twenty gallons of Tru-Value semi-gloss house paint and one hundred and eighty hours of painting to complete the mural that Tullis envisioned for his hometown. He finished it the day after he applied the last brushstroke to his other commission. Looking Into the Future With the Past Close Behind, with its bold colors, graphic composition, and Native American subject matter, quickly outshone its smaller and more plain Jane counterpart at the end of the block. Soon businesspeople began dropping by to ask Tullis to do murals for them, and eventually he persuaded the city to give him five hundred dollars for each new mural he added to the local landscape. "I guaranteed them they would A MURAL MAJORITY Oklahoma Today

19 have tourist traffic if they would pay for the projects," says Tullis. And so far he has been right. A selftaught artist who claims to paint either what he sees in dreams or until he likes what's on the wall, Tullis now has more than a dozen murals gracing various buildings in town-six are described in a brochure, A SeFGuided Tourof Hominy's Murals. Bus tours pass through the middle of downtown, too, and there are postcards of the murals that Tullis will autograph on request. Says Chamber president and local insurance agent Tex Bayouth: "Y'know we have seen some results, as far as bus tours, etcetera. There've been quite a few, and there will be more. If it weren't for the murals, they (tourists) wouldn't be here." The numbers of tourists the murals have drawn to town moved Bayouth and other Chamber members to renovate the old M.K.T. depot and relocate the chamber office and visitor center there. Some locals have voiced fears that the murals might sap tourists from other sights in town or, worse yet, Tullis might get rich off the project, but such anxieties seem misplaced. Most visitors when asked will tell you that the murals brought them to Hominy, but the other attractions gave them a reason to linger. And good as things are these days for Tullis, he figures at an average of one hundred hours per mural, he grosses about fifty cents an hour. He makes enough between the murals and the store, he says, to keep his blue, smoke-belching Ford pickup running and to support his family of five. As a result, his wife, Teena, and family friends hold twice-monthly rummage sales so he can do more murals. (Tullis plans fifty murals in all, and when finished he plans to start painting them all over again). As for whether his new-found fame might lure him away from Hominy, it isn't likely. Tullis says he once spent a week in Taos, New Mexico-a wellknown mecca for Native American artists-and was so taken with the place, "I phoned my wife and said, 'pack our bags, we're going to Taos,' but when I got back into town, nine people waved at me, and I couldn't turn my back on them. This is home.". Getting There It would be almost impossible to miss Cha' Tullis's co/o$ul murals in Hominy altogether, but some are harder to find than others. Pick up a map to the more than twelve murals at Cira ' Tullis Designs, 108 W.Main; or at the Chamber of Commerce, 300 W. Main; or at area gas stations or convenience stores. (A tip: to look at the murals along S.H. 99, take Sheshe Street, which parallels the highway.) In his gallery, Tullis sells paintings and painted skulls, along with wearable art. Next door, at White Jmelry, Tullis sells his ownjmelry and beadwork andsilverze,ork by regional artists. Tullis, whose greatgrandmother Drucillia Dillion was fullblood Blackfoot, signs his work NGEI, for "Non-government enrolled Indian." The three Hominy landmarks in the Tullis mural at 122 W.Main Street are all still standing. The remodeled M.K.T. train dipot, on the west end of Main Street, A 1920s Marlandgas station on Main is now home to the Hominy Heritage Association. houses a visitor center with bublic mstmoms and brochures about local attractions. The 1904 rock schoolhouse, thefintpermanent publir school building in Osage County, was built from native stone and fundedby raffles, bake sales, and donations. Situated at the intenection of S.H. 99 and 20, it's now headquarten for the Hominy school board In the southeastern part of town (east of S.H. 99) is the Osage Indian village with its historic tribal roundhouse, which is being restored, and a nm/y constructed dance arbor. In June, the Osage hold their relirious I-lon-shka dance at the arbor. Visitors are welcome, but locals stress the village is not a "tourist trap" and urge everyone to behave in a respectful manner. Bingo games are Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday nights, andsundav afernoons. (918) The Drummotldhome, a Victorian-style beauty built in 1905 by Indian trader Fred Drummond. has been restored and repainted in its original exterior colonalternating bands of /&ht and dark green. Owned by the Oklahoma Historical Society, it's open Tuesday through Saturday. Admission to the house at 305 N. Price is free. (918) Ifyou gef hungry stop by MBJ's grocery, sit down in an old-fshioned booth, and order what could be thr best bulger in town. Or try the Hominy Cafe, 111 E. Main, famous for its stujfen bell peppen. Jua/'s Bakety, I06 S. Wood, semes most every kind of breakfast food save forpanrakes. A local favorite: the yeast doughnuts. The 1930s-era soda fountain at the Comer Drug Store, 101 E. Main, dispenses shakes, malts, and irr cream. Maybe the best bet, though, is to look for the Osage wornen who sell meat pies and fry bread on Main Street on Tuesdays and Thu~sdays. September-October 1992

21 THE ROAD By Suzette Brewer Photographs by Theresa Bragg heila was sitting with an overnight bag "Actually, I would like to start with Meers," on the steps of her downtown Tulsa I told her, Seasoned Traveler that I am. "I apartment looking very bored when I have an interview with the owner of the reswent to pick her up. "Do you know taurant in the morning." where we are going?" she asked as she ne- Well, okay. Even Columbus had a general gotiated her way into the passenger seat of sense of direction. my car. We left northeastern Oklahoma behind on "Not exactly," I replied calmly. that rainy Friday night heading south and One eyebrow did a jackknife. west for the lunar landscape of Lawton. Our "In fact, we need to stop and get a map," supplies were minimal: John Morris's land- I blithely confided. mark book The Ghost Tmns of ORIahonzu, a road A map? map from 7-1 1, and our "Oh, and some gas, too," wits. We were in search of I reminded myself aloud. Searching for ghost the lost towns, villages, and Oh and some gas, too? hamlets that have come and It was a rather unscientowns in Oklahoma can be gone in this fair state since tific approach,.. I agree. But considering that Marco Polo's map had sea monsters roaming the waters the early 1800s. 'This trip would be the first of three like lookjng lora lontact expeditions I would take down the Ghost Road. I say off Terra Incognita and he lens on white ceramic ti. ue,peditionw because what found China, how hard began as a lighthearted could finding a coupla' Easy it aii'l romp for burgers and folkdried up old ghost towns lore-albeit with a Hallowbe? Oklahoma is after all a relatively small een theme-eventually took on a deeper state-negotiable, too, what with three ma- historical and personal perspective than I ever jor interstates and S.H. 3 cutting it up into could have envisioned. Indian Removal, land eight generous pie-shaped pieces; it wasn't runs, lotteries, statehood, the oil boom, the like I was asking her to drive off into the Great Depression, and simply the hapless unknown of a state like, well, Texas. migration of humans-forced and volun- September-October 1992

22 Wirt has the distinetion of having been destroyed by fire not once but four or five times (nobody could keep count). Known for its double-fisted, shoot-'em-up atmosphere, it would seem that rebuilding Wirt was an act of futility. Nonetheless it was rebuilt each The oil hamlet was so lawless that paymasters drove miles out of their way to avoid crossing bridges where hi-jacks were commonplace. It was a town of gamblers, squatters, prostitutes, drunks, and outlaws where "hard and quick fists, tough and thick skulls, and the ready use of revolvers was the rule and not the exception," writes John Morris. The most prosperous commercial endeavor in town: the undertaking parlor. (Dead folks liter- Wirt was first called Ragtown, but Kenny Franks, director of education at the Oklahoma Heritage Association, says that was a misnomer. "All oil boomtowns had little cities made of tents known as tary-gave rise (and fall) to thousands of towns that now exist only in the minds and hearts of those old enough to remember them in better times: Before the oil wells dried up. Before coal mining ceased to be a reason for a town's existence. Before the interstate diverted the steady flow of mankind by the merchant's door. Before the mineral waters went bad. Before the man who farms became dispensable in the eyes of Uncle Sam. For reasons such as these the attraction ghost towns hold is not just for the academic. Ghost towns connect us to the past-from what was to what is-like peepholes to a grand theater of life. "It may have some relation to family history, or for collecting relics of the past," theorizes Steve Gragert, the Stillwater publisher of Tme WRFt,a magazine that covers the history of the western frontier. "Some people just want to get a flavor of something that has disappeared. There is definitely on-going interest in ghost towns throughout the country." ON THE ROAD,AGAIN Red-eyed and starving, but safely parked in front of the only building of any note to be found in Meers, we spied Joe Maranto the next morning at the Meers Store (twenty miles northwest of Lawton on S.H. 1 IS), which Maranto owns and operates. "This started as a doctor's office, a pharmacy, and a newspaper, the Mount Sheridan Minm, all at the same time," Maranto said, pointing to a small corner room that was part of the original building (there've been nine additions to date). "Doctor Starbuckthat was his name, I swearsold local hootchie out of the back window for 'medicinal purposes.' " Meers, the town, was born out of men's lust for gold. Local Indian legends had always included references to old Spanish gold mines and sightings of Mexican miners digging for silver in the nearbv hills. SO was surprised when after a few small strikes in the 1890s' newspapers began likening the area to Colorado's rich Cripple Creek mines-a bit prematurely. In 1902 when the fcderal governmcnt opened the Comanche- Kiowa-Apache lands to settlement, everyone not engaged in mining was ordered to move north across Medicine Creek. The town those evicted founded was Mecrs. Five hundred residents, three doctors, a school, and five businesses flourished here oncc. By 1905, however, the rush was over, and the sea of tents which appeared overnight disappeared just as quickly. Meers Store, which In lhe hills of Adaii County, thereisalab~thofbachoads so inlricale lhat if you know where lo go, neither God nor the g0vemoltnlwill hnd IOU, doublcs as a restaurant, is one of the last remnants of a time when local hunting parties sometimes included Quanah Parker and Teddy Roosevelt and even Koosevelt's alleged mistress. Tell me about this mysterious "mistrcss," I said. "I wot-'t tell you her Oklahoma Today

A 1929fi7,the Dust Bozl/, anda hi$way bypass orchestrated the ruin ' - of Bn'nkman, once aprospenous G m County community with a winnilrg ",., girls' basketba/l team.

23 A 1929fi7,the Dust Bozl/, anda hi$way bypass orchestrated the ruin ' - of Bn'nkman, once aprospenous G m County community with a winnilrg ",., girls' basketba/l team. September-October 1992 name," Maranto told me in hushed tones, "but the story goes that Teddy Roosevelt went on a wolf hunt with Quanah Parker and he met this girl who went along to care for the horses. It was said that she was tougher than any man around-she lived in a dugout, you know. And when he went on his world tour, she went with him...she brought back Russian wolf hounds that had been given to her by the Czar of Russia that she raised and showed until the 1960s." Sheila and I looked at each other, and then at our humble surroundings. Who would have thought such a place would harbor tales of presidents and gift-giving czars?as we marveled at our good fortune, a stream of longhorn "meersburgers" (hamburgers the size of dinner plates-big dinner plates) glided by on the arms of a waitress signaling that morning was fast becoming afternoon. "Did you old homes and the main seethoseonionrings?"sheila building from an old whispered, when Joeexcused children's orphanage. Since himself to go talk to his wife. his book was seventeen years We left Meers that day (af- old, however, a greater than ter devouring burgers, fried average chance existed that okra, and coconut cream pie) most of the structures he and circled east to Cornish (a mentioned were now gone. few miles south of Ringling Still, I'd been touched by the on S.H. 89.). Founded in the story of M.E. (Mose) Harris, 1880s, Cornish was once an a man of average means, who important town in the Chickasaw Nation, in part because it was the last notable stop between rail centers at Ardmore and Fort Sill. In 1913, the Santa Fe Railroad extended its tracks westward from Ardmore to Ringling, a new town a mile farther north. Though it was within walking distance, it was too far away to keep Cornish alive. Morris's book indicated that the town was limited to a few Fa/&, iri Lincoln County. in 1907 had begun using his own money to build a home for the orphans and neglected children of Cornish. (Eventually contributions for the project came in from a11 parts of Oklahoma, others states, and even the 1910 Oklahoma Legislature.) Mose and his wife operated the Orphans Home for some forty years, taking in more than fifteen hundred children. "There it is," I said pointing to a large, white building on the right-hand side of the road. It was our first true find of the day. "Are you sure?" Sheila asked. The rambling structure had undergone some changes, no doubt. And I was taken aback to find cars parked out front. A knock at the front door, a few minutes with the new owner, Suzanne Pogue, and it all became clear. Cornish might be a ghost town, but the ten-thousand-square-foot

24 ' KA?ISAS.;j J {--cr;- * I ME*. "-u c.r* t Beer City: The Party In No Man's Land Beer City was an unusual town if for no other mwnthan it was said to have b n composed exc~usi~ly of disreputable houses. It never had a post ofice, church, or ~chool, nor did it have cattle pens or gathering pens for livestock. The townsite wrs never platted, and irs entire win street was lined by redlights,saloons, and dance halls. (Guess where its name came from) Local merchants, who staged free wrestling and boxing matches, horse racing, and Wild West shows to attract patrons, were known to run newspaper ads in other towns asking people to relocate to White City, "the only town of ia kind in the civilized world where they is absolutely no law." A sample of the local character:pussy Cat NeU, the madam in charge of the house above the Yeilow Snake Saloon, once put a load of buckshot into the body of the town marshal, who was in turn an active rustler in his own right. When Oklahoma Territory obtained the Public Land Strip in 1890were the town was situated, law enforcement arrived and for Beer City, the party was over. The city had been around for all of two years. orphanage (or at least one wing of it) was still someone's home-its earlier reincarnation still very much a part of its personality and the lives of the Pogue family. Mrs. Pogue told me later that some of the children who lived at the orphanage still come back for visits. "They have real fond memories of the place," she said. "They've said Mr. Harris was a kind old man." On the way back to the car, we rounded a corner and came upon the orphanage's old basketball hoop. "You can almost see the kids running around," Sheila said. I'd been thinking the same thing. KINDRED SPrn A s the old saying goes,"birds of a feather flock together," and it held true in the case of Oklahoma. When people arrived here-no matter if they were Native Arnerican, European, or Americans of African descent-they usually came with tribal members, family, friends, partnersin-crime, or other likeminded individuals looking for a new life. According to George Carney, professor of geography at Oklahoma State in Stillwater, people came to this area in search of what he calls "utopian escapism." "Whether it was political, religious, racial, or economic," he said, "people came west looking for a new life away from whatever restraints they may have had in the larger society." Black freedmen (former slaves of Indians) and southern slaves who came later in the nineteenth century alone created some twentyeight towns, mostly in, the east central part of the state near Muskogee. Over half of these black towns, like DouglasCity near Luther, are now footnotes in history, lost to statehood, integration, and the decline of the cotton industry. There are a hundred ways a town fails, but Gragert believes it eventually comes down to survival of the fittest. "Towns survived or died because of their natural evolution," he told me, "like plants or animals." Most fell victim to a lack of transportation, new liquor laws, lost county seat bids, the oil busts, or the Dust Bowl. Or a combination of the above. Ingersoll, the final destination on the first leg of our trip, is one such example. A rowdy German community founded near the Kansas border after the opening of the Cherokee Outlet, Ingersoll emerged in 1901with the Choctaw railroad. Soon came pool halls and sa- loons, which outnumbered the churches two to one. The town was known as a "sinful" place, in part because it was thought to have been named after Robert Ingersoll, a famous agnostic. It was, however, named (like a great many towns in Oklahoma), after a railroad official. In this case, C.E. Ingersoll of the Philadelphia Railroad. At statehood, all saloons were closed, but it was losing the county seat bid to Cherokee that dealt Ingersoll its final blow. A town that began full of hope, limped to a slow death during the Dust Bowl; its current population, a mere 17. We arrived in Ingersoll late that afternoon heading west on U.S. Highway 64, dodging violent storms which were ripping through the state from northwest to southeast like a knife. Sheila and I got out of the car and wandered across the highway to an old deserted diner that Madam Ptmy Cat Neil and frintb infmnt of the WW/rjte Ekpharzt Saloon in In the 1920~, Penhing in Osage County was the site of an oil refinery 3at produced ten thousand bards of oil.

1 I straight out of the burger 2 stand scene in The Grapes of 5 Wrah.You could almost hear the sound of hand-patted beef patties slapping onto the grill.

25 1 I straight out of the burger 2 stand scene in The Grapes of 5 Wrah.You could almost hear the sound of hand-patted beef patties slapping onto the grill. Looking east, we spied two old grain elevators standing like sphinxes on either side of the road, rising tall and silent out of the wide open landscape from shadows cast by moonlight. "You want to go look inside them?" Sheila asked, hopeful. "Nah," I replied, with a little shiver. BREAKINGNEWGROUND F or all the success of our trip, it had not been easy going. Searching for ghost towns in Oklahoma can be like looking for a contact lens on white ceramic tile. Easy it ain't. A wrong turn, a downed high- way sign, Or Over how many section roads you've past, can turn a straightforward route on a map into a traveler's nightmare. Early on, Sheila and I learned to follow directions precisely. We also realized you can't have too much information on an adventure like this. I was glad I had figured out most of this by the following weekend, since my husband, Eric, was along for the ride. (I had lured him with tales of places like Bethsheba, an all woman settlement between Enid and Perry founded by a Kansas woman after she learned her traveling salesman husband had a wife and children in another state. The thirty-three residents banned all things masculine-from razors to roosters.) That Saturday, Eric and I opted for Slick, named for Tom Slick, perhaps the greatest independent oil man of this century. Opened after "Mad Tom's" discovery of the Cushing Oil Field on 9 8 E - I Ẕ g- - --% Earlsboro went fmm boom to bust not once, btd twice. First it was a whiskey town that ithe he red at statehood; afer oil was discovered in 1926, it was a boom town that grm so fast townsfolk sometimes waited for their mail in block-long lines. March 15,1920, it grew to five thousand people in less than three months. Eight months later it had more than one hundred businesses. At one point, an old-timer by the name of Jim Parks told me, "Slick was bigger than Tulsa." Unfortunately, the oil boom, the town, and Slick's own health all derailed shortly after the Roaring Twenties. Even so the day Thomas B. Slick was buried in August of 1930, oil derricks throughout Oklahoma City stood silent for an hour. The only building we could find to attest to the existence of Slick, (which was ten miles southwest of Bristow on S.H.16) was an old railroad depot, now the First Baptist Church. On the backside of the building above the old platform the name "Slick" is still freshly painted-as though the Oklahoma-Southwestern Railway, whose tracks are long gone, might pull up to the station any minute. WHERETEm HAVE NO NAME The last leg of my (very) long journey began a week later, when Earl Newsome accompanied me to Ingalls. A haven in the early 1890s for the Doolin gang, Ingalls was said to have three types of residents: those friendly to the outlaws, those afraid of the outlaws, and those who found it best to play dumb about the outlaws' activities or whereabouts. But even those coping mechanisms weren't foolproof. Ingalls was the site of the most famous shootout in Oklahoma history. "The Battle of Ingalls" pitted the Bill Doolin gang, which included what was left of the Dalton gang, against federal officers on the morning of September 1, The shooting broke out sometime between nine and eleven. Doolin escaped, but three federal marshals and two bystanders died in the line of fire. Three years later Doolin was ambushed and killed while sneaking into Ingalls to get his wife and son. Gang member Bee Dunn betrayed Doolin. "(The marshals) told Bee Dunn if he'd help them get Doolin, they'd go easy on him," said Newsome, a Stillwater author who has written extensively about the shootout. "So he sold out Doolin, ratted on him for a little $36 reward." Dunn got his that same year in a shootout with a U.S. Marshal in Pawnee; the outlaw's grave was desecrated with hog entrails by locals who resented the traitor's presence in their cemetery. The town, founded in 1889, began its decline after losing the county seat to Stillwater. "As soon as they saw that Ingalls wouldn't be September-October 1992

In a decade known for debauchery no place was any wilder than Cromwell. During its boom days the town was known "as the wickedest city in the world," writes John At least, its fame was short- trict.

26 In a decade known for debauchery no place was any wilder than Cromwell. During its boom days the town was known "as the wickedest city in the world," writes John At least, its fame was short- trict. One month later oil was discovered on a nearby farm ita Mountains in the 1890s failentopan out, itfeel/s, the ~nirri~~g towil, Meen Store, the landnzark, carries on, semin~ up L.onghonr hutgrrs and r~tstir ki~rrh. town to begin with, the only law in Cromwell was the county sheriff, and he was on the take. Call it a coincidence, tween Cripple Creek, Colo- problems with drugs and alco- cocaine was just as bad then as shal Bill =lghman was brought in to clean the town up. He was shot and killed in the process, ere 249 Left in town. the center of Payne County," observed, "they As we left, Newsome pointed out a marker on a dirt mains ofwhat was,where much of the gun battle took place. stured at a map of old Ingalls showing the town as it was then and where the ok place. Someone had been using the map ometime during the weeks spent studying Morris's book, I came across a town called Mayes. It was located in Adair County near my hometown of Stilwell, though I had never heard of it. What caught my eye, however, was the fact that it was the site of the courthouse of the Flint District, Cherokee Nation, of which I am a member. So I Sunday morning on the last day of "Hey, darlin'," she said. "You finished with that article yet?" Everybody's an editor. "No," I replied. "Listen, there's a town called Mayes that is supposed to be ncar Stilwell, do you know anything about it?" "No." She thought for a moment. "But if you want to come down, I'll go with you to look for it." "Well," I squirmed. "I'm not sure. Why don't I call you later. I don't know what the weather's going to be like and I have to go to Grove first." You can't go home again, said Thomas Wolfe. And neither could I. "Okay, honey," she said, letting me off the hook. "But ifyou want to, I'll be here." And indeed there she was, standing in her driveway when I got to her house that day. I had called her from a pay phone after I had left Grove. I was going to weasel out and go back to Tulsauntil she answered the phone that is. Mothers. So here we were together heading south on 59.Actually we wcre heading south again. Wc wcre lost and so had backtracked to the Cherry Trec Grocery for gas and directions. "I'm looking for an old building around here," I said to the young Indian man behind the counter. "It's an old courthouse. Do you know what I'm talking about?" "Does it have a fence around it?" he asked. He could have casily said 'no,' and we both knew it. "I don't know," I replied, looking him straight in the eye. "It looks like an old cabin." "Yeah," he nodded having decided to help me. "I know where it is." In the hills of Adair County, the labyrinth of backroads is so intricate that if you know where to go, neither God nor the government will find you. Mayes is one such place. And though I know my way around, without the clerk's crude sketch we would never have found it. Ironically, however, the Oklahoma Today

27 1 approach had a vague sense of familiarity, like I had been there before, though I couldn't remember when or why. Just as I began to suspect we were lost again, a rooftop came into view over a roadside thicket of trees and brush. There it stood, circled by a chain-link fence. Built in 1841, the courthouse served Flint District, the smallest of the seven districts which made up the Cherokee Nation; this courthouse was a distribution point for payments to tribal members after the sale of the Cherokee Outlet. Mayes had come along in 1888,and it was a political and agricultural center until the railroad went through Stilwell instead. My mother followed me as I started toward the building with my camera. Finding a wooden shutter which had been broken open by vandals, I peeked inside, trying not to disturb a swarm of black and red wasps. It had a definite aura about it, at once menacing and attractive. From the porch I could see a creek through the trees. "That used to be the old hangin' tree," mom said quietly. I stopped in mid-stride and turned toward her. "What'd you say?" "That's where they used to hang people," she said, pointing to an old stump in the middle of a patch of weeds so tall you wouldn't dare put your foot in them without a weapon or cowboy boots. "When we were little, this was a bean patch, and we'd come and pick in the summers. And they told me it was an old hangin' tree, and I believed it because you could still see the rope and hair on the limb where the rope was wrapped." Viok Springs, west of Konawa, should~e been called "Violent Springs." The town began in the 1890sjust across the border of /ega/[v dry Oklahoma Tenjory. It Weight saloons and no churhs; part of the metery was reservedforthose who met an untime[y (andunr~atural) end September-October 1992 L "Are you serious?" I asked her, trying to imagine the place as it might have been in the late 1930s. "You don't forget things like that," she said. "I can see it like it was yesterday." As we walked along the creek, an opening appeared in the trees that led to the edge of the water. Suddenly, I knew where I was. Twenty years earlier my dad and I had fished for perch in this same creek. This was where I had taught my younger brother to swim and where I played water tag with my cousins. It was never called Mayes or Flint. It was just a swimming hole to an eight-year-old, barefoot me. And back then, the court- house was nothing more than - an old chimney surrounded by a pile of rocks and waisthigh weeds. (The Adair County Historical Society rebuilt it in the 1970s.) That's why I didn't recognize the place. In that moment, the past condensed into one bright, shining marble of time in which I saw vivid images of children and beans and tree limbs and hair. There was my dad with his cane pole between his knees, trying to teach me to bait a hook. There was his father and his father before him and even my great-great-grandfather- Cherokees who had roamed Flint District since the Indian Removal. Their whereabouts I had stumbled upon in the Dawes Commission testimonies weeks earlier while doing research for this story. The great irony was that after two thousand miles of searching for other people's pasts, I had come home without even knowing it. mi Suxette Brmer is a Tulsahased free-lance writer. Theresa Brag is a photographer ljvlrzg in Norman. The M e for Oklahotn ghost town hunten is Ghost Towns of Oklahoma, mritten by historian John W. Morris and publi.chedby the (Iniuersity of Oklahotna Press, Norman, itz hlortis's definition of a ghost tmn was one that either no /orzger existed or had decreasea'in population by eighol percent. Irr his book, Morris listed 130 of Ok/ahoma's fano thousat~dghost towns, with exact lorafiorrs, short histories, some street maps, atd "bdore" and "afrer"photographs. Some of the sanzr towns can be foutzditz Oklahoma Ghost Towns, Mining Camps and Boom Towns, a map shorcirrg the locatiotls of 251 sites. Th map, publided ly the Ok/~zhomu Heritage Assoriation, can be orderedfionl the Ok/ahornu Heritage Center, 201,V I7 I4th, Oklahonra City, OK The 64.88price itrc/udes shipping and handling. From titize to tin~e, True West atidold West, m1o mestern history magazitzes based in Sti/lwater, publish storits aboutghost toaltis. Stories on Ok/ahonra ghost tour,ns, though, arz pretty spane, savs enitor John Joerschke. Write for the magazine at P.O. Box 1117, Stil/a~ater, (405) When he died, Jobti ~Uorris left his col/ecfion of papers and photographs, aqhich includes the notes and manuscrips of his ghost town boob, to the IVesfenz History Collectiorrs at the Utiiuenily of Oklahorrza. Morris researcmthe book at the WHC: librag, notably from the field researrh done bjl Works Pt-ogresss Adnzinistration writen. The WPA itrtemieu~s atzdpapers are iridexed a~$habefical(y toa9n. The Westenr History Collectiotr library aridphoto nrchives at imonriett Hall on the OU campus, are open from eir/rt n.m. to fie p.m.,monday to Friday. (47.5)

28 GettingIntoAutumn CoZo~$zcZ ways to savor the season Fort Gibson stu life. 'hen the trees are turning pumpkin-colored and rust, and the sky is the shade of blue that seems reserved for October, the tug is irresistible. Nothing will do but to jump in the car, head for a twolane road and drink in the colors of autumn. We're all for that. We do it ourselves. But, with autumn weather being what it is in Oklahoma (it's like summer would be if it was airconditioned), it seems a shame to stay in your car. We've rounded up a few suggestions-some leisurely, some not-to get you from behind the windshield and into the landscape. Come early: picnir tables and campsites are at a premium during the fist dree weekends in October clt Red Rock Canyon State Park near Hinton.

31 The stars of the hike into Hollis Canyon at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge are the sugar maples (acersacchamm), also locally known as Caddo maples. In western Oklahoma, the maples grow only in the canyons of Red Rock State Park and in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge near Lawton. The trees aren't as tall as the ones in New England (if they were they could be tapped for maple syrup) but their change from green to yellow or orange-red is just as showy. The nature trail is short at Red Rock Canyon, because the canyon itself is barely more than a stone's throw from wall to wall. The park road, though, is a mile long; at the north end a spot has been set aside as a sugar maple preserve. The three-hour guided hikes at the wildlife refuge cover a little over a mile and a half of terrain (there's lots of interpretation along the way). The hikes are set for October 17, 18, 24, and 25, on Saturday mornings at nine and on Sunday afternoons at one. Hikers need to make reservations on the Tuesday before the weekend. Call (405) Do-it-yourselfers might want to pick up a copy of Forest Trees of Ok/ahoma, published by the Oklahoma Forestry Division of the Department of Agriculture. The book lists 156 species of trees found in Oklahoma, with information about each and illustrations. To get a copy, send a check or money order for $4 to the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Forestry Service, 2800 N. Lincoln Blvd., Oklahoma City, OK Left, Caddo, or sugar, maples are an oasis on theplains in western Oklahoma. These are i ~zred Rock Canyon. Abwe, a waterfallat Chandler Park in Tulsa. September-October 1992

32 The Mountain Fork River in southeastern Oklahoma is notjust forfloaten: the her is stochdyear-round with hwn andraindow trout. "When thqhpatting theirpoles away in the Rockies,"sajs an avidfly faheman, "wehjustgetting stad.'" Oklahoma Today

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33 '. '.. #.,.. ' ~ : : '... <'.._.i,,' '...._#.... :... :,;.....: :.;.....',j.' '... :I....; '<..?ir': ','.,.'... ' ,'.I..._.. -.., \...,,..' '.. %,. :;..-.:..;.?-.. ;...., :.,,,:,,:,:.:..<.....-',:' " '...., Yj.4., ::.....,.' ,I.'.....::, x., :.,,..,.' :* ::'...:: ,,._....,. '.'..,;,. %., ' , - I..... :, -. :...=*._......,. -.. ' , '_ , : I' ' Canoe guides have a rule of thumb: they go out on the river as long as the air temperature and the water temperature added together are greater than one hundred. Since the water temperature below the dam along the Mountain Fork River is usually between fifty-four and sixty degrees, plenty of fall days qualify. In the Beavers Bend State Park area, boaters have two choices: a four to five hour ten-mile trip, or a two-and-ahalf-mile trip that takes about an hour. On a golden September afternoon, why hurry? For short trips, call RiverFloats, in Beavers Bend State Park, (405) ; for longer trips, call WhipPoorWill... Floats, (405) September-October1992

35 rn ir; - A STORIEDRIDE The Wild Horse Trail Ride in southeastern Oklahoma is not a crosscountry ride, says Riley Donica, the son of a range rider and owner of the Wild Horse Trail Camp near 2 Honobia on S.H Since his camp is in the heart of the Kiamichi Mountains, that really doesn't matter: the mountains are rich with old logging roads, outlaw trails, and above all yarns. "You bring your plunder in and set up camp at the camp. Every day we ride out in a different direction," Donica says. One day riders might visit the Spanish Crossing, reportedly a landmark for Spanish travelers after Coronado blazed the trail in the sixteenth century, the next, an outlaw trail used by horse thieves P I MANICURED FOLIAGE after the Civil War. Rides average from twelve to twenty miles; optional The thirty-two-hole Lincoln Park gaited rides are longer. Golf Course in Oklahoma City is Donica includes meals in his daily steeped in tradition: Only three pros rate, which ranges from $25 to $35 a have worked at the course since it day. "We have a theory on food: if opened in the 1920s. (Their pictures you get mad about something on the hang among the historic photos in the ride, you're ashamed to gripe after course restaurant like family portraits.) you've eaten." Bring a horse, a tent, The course is long, so golfers have lots or an RV (some folks just sleep in the of time to admire autumn. It's customback of a pick-up) or Donica can ary, too, to compare notes on the arrange for you to rent horse and sixteenth hole on the west-it's tough. tack. The Wild Horse Trail Ride is The course at 4001 NE Grand Blvd. is October 17-23, the camp opens on open every day except Thanksgiving October 16. Call the horse camp at and Christmas, from dawn to dusk. (918) (405) Left, the Kiamichi Mountains, a western range of the Ouachita Mountains, are so remote, the fint paved roads weren't built until Hone trails and dirt loging mads abound. Aboae, the secondgreen on the east coune at Lincoln Park Golf Course in Oklahoma City. September-October 1992

36 =- T!!! =L- a.;

37 PRETENDERS REENACTORS MAKE HISTORY THEIR PLAYGROUND. BY MAU RA MCDERMOTT PORTRAITS BY DAVl D FITZGERALD al Kinzer can trace his interest in the Civil War back to a single day at his parents' farmhouse in Morris. He was sitting with his grandmother, when the older woman unwrapped a pair of heavy, bronze medals and announced that she was entrusting him with a little piece of family history. The medals had belonged to Kinzer's great-great-grandfather, Jay Fairbanks, a sergeant in the 60th New York Infantry who had fought at Gettysburg and survived. Everything else-his uniform, his gun- had been lost; only these medals, souvenirs of two subsequent reunions at Gettysburg, had been passed down. The moment the medals dropped into Kinzer's seven-year-old palm, a bond was formed between him and Jay Fairbanks, the Yankee soldier. The 8th Kansas Infantry advances on the Cononfderates aat a reenactmetzt of the Ju/y 1863 Bade of Honq Sprin~s, near Checotah.

Like a kid who finds an arrowhead and suddenly feels the urge to shoot imaginary arrows into the sky, receiving those medals made Kinzer want to play Billy Yank.

38 Like a kid who finds an arrowhead and suddenly feels the urge to shoot imaginary arrows into the sky, receiving those medals made Kinzer want to play Billy Yank. He cajoled his mother into sewing a little blue uniform for him, and after his chores around the farm, he would shoulder his toy musket and march across the prairie pastures. On weekly visits to the Okmulgee library, he began checking out books about the Civil War. When he learned a major Civil War battle, the At Honey Springs, wetgun& derforcedthe Re& to fight with saben and knives. Battle of Honey Springs, had been fought just twenty miles away from his family's farm, he couldn't believe his luck. He hightailed it to the spot described in the book and spent hours stomping through the brush along Elk Creek, wandering among the cows, stopping in at farmhouses to get his bearings, trying to imagine the battlefield as it had been one hundred years before when the "Gettysburg of the West" was fought. Consumed as he was with recapturing that moment in history, never did Cal Kinzer imagine that thirty years later the abandoned battlefield would be mowed and marked, and he would play the part of a Union soldier on the site before fifteen thousand spectators in a reenactment of the Battle of Honey Springs. Imagination mixed with an interest in history are the main ingredients in historic reenacting, or what's more broadly known as "living history." Like Cal Kinzer's childhood playacting, living history is, in essence, theater without a curtain: A person from today (a reenactor) dresses up like a person from WHATMAKES LIVING HISTORY DIFFERENT FROM PURE PLAYACTING IS THE EMPHASIS PLACED ON HISTORICAL AUTHENTICITY yesterday and attempts to live as that person might have in his time. It may be in a permanent village like the seventeenth century Tsa-La-Gi Cherokee village at Tahlequah or in a temporary encampment at a historical site like Honey Springs. The men and women who pursue living history as a hobby do so with straight faces and a surprising dedication to authenticity. Sometimes the encampments are military, and the daily life of the soldier of a particular era is reenacted complete with drills, skirmishes, and perhaps a choreographed battle or two. Other times the camps showcase the routines of pioneers, cowboys, mountain men, or other early Americans. "Reenactors are trying for realistic theater, and I think they do a good job," says Civil War historian and author Frank Vandiver of College Station, Texas, who has become fascinated by the reenacting phenomenon, particularly as it pertains to the Civil War. "The war is more popular now than it ever was," the friendly historian jokes. And he's right-there are an estimated fifty thousand reenactors in the U.S. alone, Oklahoma Today

39 twenty thousand of whom refight the Civil War every year. In addition a rash of American movies-from historical mini-series like "The Blue and the Gray," "North and South," and "Son of the Morning Star" to films like Glory, Danca With Wok, and the recent Far and Awayhave created a demand for historic reenactors-a good many of them from Oklahoma. Hollywood, it would seem, likes the fact that reenactors can be counted on to be authentic, right down to their underwear. I t is said Julius Caesar staged the very first living history event in Rome in the 40s B.C., when he filled the coliseum with water and brought in battleships to reenact his navy's high jinks on the Mediterranean Sea. "He did it mostly to entertain himself," says Whit Edwards, coordinator of living history programs for the Oklahoma Historical Society and himself an avid reenactor. "But also for (the enjoyment of) others." In the U.S., history had to cool a bit before reenactors could find a receptive audience here, but by the turn of the century all the great American circuses and travel- ing shows had-along with acrobats and elephantssomething called a "spectacle." Like Caesar's reenactments, these first efforts tended toward the militaristic: Bamum and Bailey reenacted battles of the American Revolution. Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show reenacted mock battles between pioneers and Indians. All, of September-October 1992 BARRY LINDUFF 7 f ~U.S. INFANTRY I 1830s I Though the dress of American soldiers in the 1830swas &illmore European than American in design, infantry soldiers at least were beginning to exert'their individuality. One of their first fashion statements: thii leather forage cap, nicknamed the "hog-killer," says Bany Linduff of 1 Miami, because"it's so ugly, a hog killing would be lhe only place you'd want to wear it." This infantry unifqnn recalls the opulence of Napo1,eon more than the asceticism of our founding fathers, but it actually made alot of sense. The white loose-weave cotton unifonn took the heat of Florida duringthe Seminole wan, as well as the fierce summers of Fort Gibson. George Catlin's paintings of the 1834 Dodge/Leavenworth expedition from Fort Gibson to Lawton show dragoons dressed this way, says Linduff., Besides a knapsack and bedroll, the infantry soldier marching across Oklahoma canied a wooden canteen and a cartridge box attached to his crossbeits. Subtle proof of an authentic impression: dropfront rather than fly-front pants, and pewter buttons decorated with eagle-ch- [ ing the eagle breast plate a the crossbeits.. I course, featured paid actors. white-bearded Confederate At about this same time, veterans slowly walked across reunions of Civil War veter- the open farm land towards ans, like the one Cal Kinzer's Cemetery Ridge, reenacting great-great-grandfather at- Pickett's Charge, a battle in tended, began to be held, and which six thousand of the fifa few of them also featured teen thousand Confederates reenactments of a sort. In the who charged the Union line 1913 reunion at Gettysburg, on July 3, 1863, were killed. This time, however, the Union veterans behind the stone wall greeted the men in gray with embraces rather than bullets. The scene was captured on film and is part of Ken Bums' Civil War series, originally shown on PBS. Reenactments remained rare for the next hundred years. Then, in 1961 came one of two turning points in the living history movemenc the American centennial of the Civil War. Held from 1961 to 1965, centennial events were sponsored by the National Park Service and encouraged initially by John F. Kennedy, himself a Civil War buff. The crude battlefield reenactments that accompanied many of these observances were a baptism for many men, and out of them the Thou& the modem g/assa and jeans on this whee/wn'&t impression fa//shofl, this man is demonstrating a skill with antique took that is all but extinct. -'r '.

40 reenactor as hobbyist emerged. Charles Smith of Yukon, a retired artist and Confederate reenactor who attended some of the events, recalls the fervor of those days as well as what was then the conventional wisdom: it couldn't possibly last. What Smith and other Civil War buffs didn't anticipate was the effect Civil War movies like Shandoah and television shows like "The Commanding officen from Texas and Arkansas confr at the Fort Reno and Indian Territory Days reenactment near El Reno. MID-1820s TO 1840s Americansw-which Cal Kinzer watched "religious1y"-would make on the next generation. Kinzer's fate was sealed by a single television show-the centen- en donned their fooforawand traded pelts (what mounnial reenactment of the Battle of First Bull Run, or Manassas. (Civil War battles musket. The lonely mountain man "named it, cheroften have two names be- it, and took care of it," says Lawrence, who makes cause the Confederates named battles after the nearest settlement, Northerners after the nearest body of water-manassas was on a creek called Bull Run.) At Bull moment reenacted ior College in Texas. Every- Run, Union forces were not on television, something one at the event wore blue or only stopped-they broke clicked inside Kinzer, and he gray Sears polyester work ranks and fled to Washington told himself, ''This is for clothes, and everyone was an in wild retreat. In the after- ~t however, until he officer, he recalls laughing. math that followed, the North graduated high school in 1971 The battle, Kinzer says, was realized for the first time that that Kinzer got the chance to "rinky-dink." But it was a the war would not be over in attend his first reenactment, start. three months. Watching this, affair held at Hill Jun- By 1976, when the country 40 observed the Bicentennial of the American Revolution, the modem era of reenacting had begun. It would be marked by a move toward authenticity, and it would seal the fate of living history as a viable pastime in the U.S. Almost every fall or spring weekend you can find a living history event being staged somewhere in Oklahoma. The biggest show this fall: a reenactment in October of the 1864 Confederate capture near Cabin Creek of a Union supply train, said to be "one of the most picturesque events" of the Civil War in Indian Territory. Besides colorful clothes, the smell of bacon, and the music of another time, a visitor can "break the museum glass and shake the hand of a historical figure," says Steve Bowers of Guthrie's 5th cavalry L troop. In the last five or six years some five hundred Oklahomans have become reenactors, and centennial observances of the Land Run in 1989 whetted so many people's appetites for living history that Oklahoma reenactors can routinely find gigs in their home state now. Meanwhile, the types of events have become more diverse. As a result you can now find an Oklahoman who has the correct garb to depict ~ I O S ~ time period, from the Revolutionary War tothe more recent Gulf War- A Case in point is Mike Adkins, who teaches American history at West Moore High School. Adkins's students had always loved participating in their SC~OO~'S an- Oklahoma Today

41 nual medieval day (especially the rack and torture chamber), so one year Adkins had them try a Civil War day. Both teacher and students enjoyed themselves so much that Adkins now dresses in the appropriate garb for the period being studied by his class and answers his students' questions in the first person. He tries to give both sides; one day he'll be an Alamo Texan, the next a Mexican soldier. The result: some lively discussions and interesting term papers. Oklahoma's Teacher of the Year for , now an avid reenactor outside of the classroom, too, believes living history is the best way to get through to his video-numbed students and just about anyone else. What distinguishes serious reenactors like Adkins is the lengths they will go (and the money they will spend) to make their message historically authentic. They have a name for those who do otherwise: farbs. The term fad was coined at the bicentennial observance of the British surrender at Yorktown (which ended the Revolutionary War). Event coordinators needed more British impressions, and a call went out for "Fairly Authentic Regular British." Those who responded turned out to be "anyone with a red sports jacket, white slacks, and a musket ofany vintage," says Whit Edwards. The acronym stuck: now farb is used by purists to describe those not sufficiently authenticsay a guy wearing a coonskin hat and a muscle shirt carrying a musket. September-October 1992 ' DANLAWRENCE, ' CONFEDERATEOFFICER. CMLWAR, 1860s - confederateciilwar unhm are bothexpensivd~they startat $1,0001 and confusing [statemilias wore yellow and even white jackets),.so it isd't surprising that reenactors field a lot of deep questions about their'garb. Like the q d n mostasked of auciicwar reenactors "Is thh uniform hot?" Reenactors wouldn't be reenactors if they couldn't ' are made of wool, so.fie)breathe, and once wet they actually work lik= a swamp ~oder. - ion, New Orleans, litwas alsothe uniform of the Washington group) is unuql in that it is singlebreasted and a darker "Richnrondl' graythanthemwefamiliar cadetgray.. "Tljey didn't how $10 Standards for reenactors in Oklahoma are stricter now than in the early 1970s, when anyone with a bandana could play cowboy at an event. These days reenactors are screened for Historical Society gatherings. Most reenactors appreciate such atten- to shoot," says Whii Edwards tion to detail, and they believe in the long run audiences do, too. History is better served, they reason, by such standards. Among people this serious, there are bound to be disagreements about what, exactly, is "right." After Cal Kinzer wrote an article entitled "A Dozen Inexpensive Ways to Improve Your Personal Impression" for the Camp Chase Gagfie, a magazine for Civil War reenactors, he received a barrage of letters taking issue with some of his suggestions, which included "get a haircut" and "lose some weight." Avoiding the dreaded farb label does takes work. Reenactors study antique photographs, read diaries, and scour memoirs of their chosen time period in search of scraps of information-how tightly to trim a cuff, how lavishly to pleat a blouse. Some go for the gold: A member of Scott White's Missouri Ranger group recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to the National Archives to get a microfilm copy of Captain Clemson's daybook, lost in I This rid Pawnee Bill Wild U.".-..-I, in 1988 woui,.tpass musm now: modern suspenders, bluejeons, andbandana are forbidden I ;r -.U'( ', -* y -..

LINDA ROLLINS CAMPFOLLOWER ClVl L WAR'1860 TO 1880 During the Civil War, Union General "Figtrtin' Joe" Hwker's men didn't have togo far for a l ie Rand R.

43 LINDA ROLLINS CAMPFOLLOWER ClVl L WAR'1860 TO 1880 During the Civil War, Union General "Figtrtin' Joe" Hwker's men didn't have togo far for a l ie Rand R. Hwker hired ladiesof the evening toset up their tents on the outskirts of his camp. When Hooker nioved, the ladies moved, earning themselves the appellation "Hooker's Legion," later shortened to simply hookers. Widows, orphans, runaways, and other women on their own fell into tlie life of the saloon girl, hooker, or the slightly mob mpectable camp follower, who was paid by the army to do laundry and sewing, and who sometimes picked up extra money in the eienings. The hooker's uniform was her plain muslin underwear: corset cover, pantaloons, and dark cotton stockings. Satin and lace were worn only by the few "fancy ladies" in big eities. "Anybody who comes to a living history encampment with a Miss K iilook is not authentic," says Linda Rollis of Oklahoma Cii, who does impressionsof women of bothh i and low repute. Women of all types carried parasols; a tan was distinctly ur- rows of tents wh8feprivates camped, like these at Fort Reno, wem called "Campany Stmet." The wooden folding chain, tables, and cookbo3cess am similar to what was bukd in freight wagons from camp to camp. Thwhite camas tents are now available by mail order in nine historically comct shafls andsiaes, mnging in price from $20 to $250. These days the tents am men waterproof andflame retardant. It's traditionai for a nmice to spend thni&t in his tent, men $ifit's snowing. Wrapped in blbnkets and skins andsleeping on six inches of snow during the annuai Trader's Feast at Roman Nose Park in Decemberiust "makes 1it mom festive," says Whit ~d&r&.

the shuffle for 150 years. A kind of captain's log, it describes the uniforms, food, and everyday activities of Clemson's company in 1812.

44 the shuffle for 150 years. A kind of captain's log, it describes the uniforms, food, and everyday activities of Clemson's company in Such a find can overnight change what is commonly accepted by reenactors as authentic for an impression. Living history, however, Mike Bradley will remind you, is the kind of hobby that "if someone says, 'this is the way it was,' they've stopped being interested." A native Brit, Mike Bradley was grilled in the importance of authenticity during his Buffalo hunters, cattle drovers, anda medicine show are part of the spring encampment at the Museum of the Great Plains in Lawton. younger days reenacting medieval history in Shenvood Forest in England (living history is considered an art form in Europe). Bradley began making reproductions of nineteenth-century clothing in 1973 while running a theatrical costume rental business in San Diego. His motivation: originals were almost nonexistent. By the time he relocated to Oklahoma, the living history hobby was spawning similar ventures across the U.S. He now stocks a Sutler's Store in Fort Gibson and has shipped his custom- For an authentic cowboy impression, one needs the ria hat and boots. Bob Warren of El Reno says that means losing modem cowboy hat with its "snap* down" front and k ["Frontier pimp," says Warren flatly). uine articles include a hat with atround brim and a -rolled edge and boots of plain leather with high heels and big spurs. [Warren's spurs are more than one hundred Cowboy gear is nothing if not functional. In fact Warren once wrote a poem about the "couple dozen uses" for a cowboy's silk neckemhief. Among them: blindfolding a bronc, catching rain water, and cleaning your gun. Other cowboy essentials: a neckband shirt with no collar and skinny cuffs, a four pocket vest, and, of course, a gun like the 1875 Remingtqn revolver Warren canies. Cattledmvers wore their holsters high, so Warren does, too; the low holster favored by John Wayne is a Hollywood invention. A cowboy impression needn't be expensive, either. Warren got one of his hats at a garage sale for $10. And, in fad, scruffy is gobd. "I don% want anything looking new," con- made period clothing all over Morning Star" and two hunthe world. His best seller: dred hats for "North and American Civil War uniforms, South." Their hats of pure ordered by members of Civil wool range in price from $36 War societies in Japan, Ger- for a simple forage cap to $1 79 many, and Australia. for a hand-sewn 1840s dress Bradley and his wife, Bette, helmet. With such prices and made the uniforms seen in reputations come expectathe mini-series "Son of the tions. When one of the main characters in "North and South'' wore a hat mistakenly sewn with its rough side up, Bradley got phone calls from reenactors over the slip-up. "The people who knew gave me hell," he says. People like the Bradleys are crucial players in the living history movement, because fabric is so fragile that practically everything pre- World War I1 is a reproduction. And sometimes even if you can find an original, it won't fit-an original spiked helmet from World War I snugly accommodates the head of a six-year-old girl. Reenactors insist on authentic-looking clothes partly because they want the public to get an accurate picture of their time period and partly because putting on a correct costume is the first step to getting into character. "I could put you in chaps, boots, and a hat," quips Linda Blackburn, a Yukon seamstress who also sews period clothing, "and before you got out the door, you'd be swaggering and talking with a little more drawl." After all if one wakes up in a living history encampment at seven in the morning, one won't hear the clang of a spoon mixing up Carnation Instant Breakfast. Instead there will be coffee perking in graniteware pots and bacon frying in cast iron skillets-all over open fires. Cooking is one of the main activities in a living history camp and a specialty all its own among reenactors. Bob Warren of El Reno does an impression of a trail cook from the late 1800s at the annual Chisholm Trail Days in Yukon. Although Oklahoma Today

PUTTING ON THE CORRECT COSTUME IS THE FIRST STEP TO GETTING IN CHARACTER Warren researched the menus used on the big cattle drives to improve the authenticity of his impression, he found "reenacting

45 PUTTING ON THE CORRECT COSTUME IS THE FIRST STEP TO GETTING IN CHARACTER Warren researched the menus used on the big cattle drives to improve the authenticity of his impression, he found "reenacting teaches you things you couldn't get from a book, like how it takes all day to fix the food, and what hard work it is." Reenactors like Warren are, in fact, amateur historians with a strong bias towards hands-on learning. Many have mastered at least one arcane skill. Sue Hughart, a naturalist at Fountainhead, learned to tan deer hides for the park's annual Heritage Days. Near Tahlequah at Tsa-La-Gi, thirty-five reenactors of Cherokee descent demonstrate basket weaving, canoe making, and flint knapping-kills of sixteenth century Cherokee life. And Dave Kroier, who picked his blacksmith impression as a tribute to his grandfather, has mastered the craft of forging hide scrapers, awls, nails, and horseshoes-the basics needed at an 1830s trading post, where the blacksmith was well paid at eight hundred dollars a year. What wares Kroier makes he sells at living history events for nominal prices, as do others like him. Tourists can usually find rope made of buffalo hair, jewelry made from river cane, rainbow- September-October 1992 JIM HAMILTON Scour,. U.S. CAVALRY 1872.TO 1885 ' With his fringed buckskin jacket and black slouch cavalry scout of the 1870s has a definite American look. Gone are the bright colors and impractical European styles of earlier days. The regular army scout's campaign uniform was designed for a man who sometimes,spent three to six months in the saddle, says Jim Hamitton of Guthrie. The slouch hat offeredgood protectionfrom the weather," as did the trademark garment of the scout-the buc,kskin jacket. "The fringe gives rainwater an exit route," Warren says. On campaigns the cavalryman was a+ to the hilt. loaded from the back or breech could fire a dozen rounds in one minutethree times the rate of fire of the discarded muzzleloader. The reproduction Springfield that Hamilton uses was typical., For hiimpression, Hamilton also canies a Remington revolver, a saber (used ceremonially), and a Bowie knife with anantler haft he fashioned himself. Less lethal, but just as essential, was the "soldier's housewife," or sewing kit. The cavalrymarr never went anywhere without it, advises hued fans fashioned from pheasant feathers, and enough arrowheads and coyote feet to please any number of cub scouts. In the life of a reenactor there are both sublime moments and moments that border on the ridiculous. The sublime: You're picking corn in a light rain at dawn. All around are your buddies. There's friendly talk, the smell of corn husks, and mist that makes the morning seem like a dream. The world outside the field seems far away, when on the horizon suddenly looms the Stars and Stripes, the flag floating over. the corn, and between the -7 rows, columns of blue soldiers '..-? marching toward you, like in ', ' - '.<.3 a nightmare. Fear hits youl'f -,$,*? %(; like a train, and you run... "I was awestruck," recallsl, 2,,#.,,? -.--,-s2. Edwards. For a fleeting mo-., :, =.&, ment that morning Edwards,&, forgot himself and became a Confederate soldier surprised by Federal troops. An experience like this is what reenactors call "time travel," and it is what makes all the expense, all the driving, all the nights sleeping on the ground worthwhile-it is the peak experience reenactors crave. Of course, there are also the ridiculous moments. Edwards once pretended to die close to the ropes separating audience from battle reenactors. Face up, eyes closed, Edwards heard a giggle and a loud female voice proclaim, "I bet he's not dead." A moment later a stream of icy cola hit his face. Other moments are harder to classify, like the time cavalry reenactor Jim Hamilton of Guthrie was asked to dip his fingers in mustache wax over and over, waxing the tips of his mustache to an ever finer point while the movie cameras whirred. At the time Hamilton was on the set of "Son of the Morning Star," a mini-series about General Custer and the Battle of the Little Big Horn. The mustache-waxing scene was "a spur of the moment thing" on the part of one of the directors. Hamilton's appearance in that movie led to a sixweek stint as an extra in Far. r.

At b ort Keno: Wgdows sometimes stayed on, working as laundresses. anddway. That's him blowing "Recall" right before the Run (the sound was dubbed in later).

46 At b ort Keno: Wgdows sometimes stayed on, working as laundresses. anddway. That's him blowing "Recall" right before the Run (the sound was dubbed in later). At two hundred dollars a day and grub for him and his horse, Hamilton is hoping for more such jobs, perhaps in the upcoming sequel to Dances Wohes. By and large, reenactors do jump at the chance to be in a movie. "Getting paid to do my hobby, that's the American dream, isn't it?" quips Scott White of Tulsa, a fourmovie veteran. "Some guys brag about being in movies," says Dave Schacher, while others "claim they'll never do it again," observes Barry Linduff. "They always do." A good many reenactors, White and Edwards among them, would argue that movies owe reenactors a debt of thanks. Hollywood still takes dramatic license with historical fact, says Edwards, but reenactors have helped ensure that when it comes to costuming, a contemporary historical movie is heads above, say, an old John Wayne film like She Wore a YellowRibbon, in which all the troopers wore yellow bandanas around their necks. For Blair and Haley Edwards, living history is a family affair; they go to encampments with their parents, Whit and Rosie Edwards, and brother, Jay, all of Putnam City. They like livinghistory, because "you get to do things you normally wouldn't do, like cook outside," says Blair. The girls havecooked eggs,biscuits, and, their favorite, roasted Cornish hens on an open fire. Their dresses, though some times stepped on, are pretty comfortable, they report, but the laceup leather shoes are not quite as good as their ("They were not [government] issue," observes Edwards flatly.) Another job for the farb police: the classic Civil War movie RedBadge of Cowage in which actors shot Krag bolt-action rifles that were actually first used thirty years later in the Spanish- American War. At some point such observations beg the question: Does anyone really notice these things? Edwards would argue, "Yes." With so many reenactors and antique gun and history buffs in the audience, and so many living his- VISITORS BUY ROPE MADE OF BUFFALO HAIR, JEWELRY MADE FROM RIVER CANE, AND ENOUGH ARROWHEADS AND COYOTE FEET TO PLEASE ANY NUMBER OF CUB SCOUTS. tory events exposing the average person to what is authentic, he believes "there are a lot of people who know the difference." That could be why moviemakers seem to be paying more attention to the details: For his role in "Son of the Morning Star," Jim Hamilton was not only required to submit pictures of his gear, but also a resume detailing the horse events he had ridden in. Yet Hollywood's interest in the Jim Hamiltons of the world is not without self-interest. Reenactors save movie makers money on costumes and props. Military reenactors know the basic military maneuvers of their time period so it's like having the original soldiers on hand when it's time to do a stunt, and reenactors also know how to handle the often tricky antique firearms. Extras without this experience have to be taught, which slows down a production, says Scott White. This was the case on the set Oklahoma Today

47 of The Last of the Mohicans, in which many Native Americans from Oklahoma appear. Joseph Meziere of Oklahoma City, hired during an open casting call, is not a reenactor, so he and other extras had to learn how to shoot and also how to use the necessary firearms without getting powder burns. But at least they looked the part. In the original film, the Huron, Abnaki, Sac and Fox, Osage, and Mohican tribespeople were played by whites. "It was ugly," says Meziere. Costuming errors may seem minor in comparison with distortions of historical fact, but even in this area reenactors are having an effect. For the Turner Broadcasting production of "Killer Angels," a movie about the Battle of Gettysburg, five thousand to ten thousand soldiers were needed. Reenacting organizations knew they had some leverage, and they asked to read and approve the script ahead of time. Several Oklahomans have since traveled back East to take part in the film, though pay this time is a T-shirt and a video tape of the movie. Other upcoming movies with Oklahoma reenactors: The Chief Joseph Story, to be filmed in Idaho next summer, and The Buffalo So/ders, a story about black cavalrymen. Though movies may transport their audience through time, in general the nature of the beast (short takes; lots of chaos) leaves little opportunity for the reenactor to experience time travel. But it does happen. For the filming of Reno's Charge in "Son of the Morning Star," they had "one hundred of us lined up side by side',' recalls Jim Hamilton. "We went on a dead run out across the plains." Some men had their sabers drawn, and Hamilton held his reins in one hand and his carbine in another. "We were all whooping and hollering," he says, "and firing our guns." For a couple of precious minutes, Hamilton was transported back to For a reenactor, that's as good as it gets. Maura McDemott of Chcotah is a contributing editor for Oklahoma Today. OKLAHOMA ClN The Oklahoma Historical Society 's schedule for living history events in September and October alone includes the Traden' Rendavous Towson and A Woman's Time Line at the Pioneer Woman Museum in Q Ponca City, both September 19; Indian War Living History demonstrations at O Fort Gibson, September and October 23-24; the Ride of the Lighthonemen at the Peter Conser House Heavener on September 25; and Fountainhead Heritage Days (1830s) near 0 Eufaula, October 2-4. Also Ole West Days at the Pawnee Bill Museum in 8Pawnee, Dragoon Days at Fort Gibson, and Chouteau Days at 8 Salina, all on October 3, and the Civil War Battle of Cabin Creek Langlq, October Anyone can participate in the euents, but t/rey must app/y in writing and be approved, says Whit Edwards, OHSprogram director, (405) Edwards can put interested parties in touch with Civil War buffs (the Ok/ahoma City-based Trans-Mississippi Rifles), a p up that reenacts Indianfig/ing (Fourth Cavalry Company K), or a group that remates camp hospital settings (the American Civil War Medical Association). He also keeps guidelines on what to wear, what not to wear, and where to findboth local and national suppliers. (The Bradqs ' Sutler's Store will be open at Fort Gibson the fouplh Friday and Saturday of each month through December, (918) ) A number of publications exkt to he& reenacton hone their impressions. Two of the best: Reenactor's Journal at P.O. Box 1864, Vama, IL 61375, andthe Camp Chase Gazette at P.O. Box 707, Marietta, OH September-October 1992

They said he was a maniac; an eccentric who searched but never found himself. None of them realized they missed the mark by a country mile. BY MICHAEL WALLIS oe Don Looney died on a gentle curve.

48 They said he was a maniac; an eccentric who searched but never found himself. None of them realized they missed the mark by a country mile. BY MICHAEL WALLIS oe Don Looney died on a gentle curve. Nobody could figure out just how the accident happened. He was on his motorcycle riding full tilt into the wild west Texas wind on Highway 118, a two-lane ribbon of asphalt that stretches due south across an ageless land toward the Big Bend country and the Rio Grande. He had already passed through the most dangerous portion of the route when he lost control. The big motorcycle left the road, raced down the soft shoulder, and crashed through a barbed wire fence, snapping cedar posts like they were twigs. Joe Don was hurled through time and space. They found him when the dust had settled and everything was still. He was lying face up beneath a mesquite tree. Arms at his side, legs straight out, he looked as if he was catnapping. But Joe Don was stone dead. His trachea was crushed, his head at an odd angle. There were no disfiguring wounds and no witnesses except for silent desert creatures. There was hardly a trace of blood. Maybe a flight of doves caught his eye. Maybe he pulled over to let apickup truck pass. Maybe itwas the sun or the wind. NOmatter about the maybes. Whatever caused him to run off the road, Joe Don didn't fight it. He didn't tly to lay down the powerful machine. He squared off with death just as he faced every moment of life-head-on and no pulled punches. He ended his time on earth at peace with himself and all those whose lives he touched. The undertaker said there was the start of a smile on his face. "1 know what Joe Don said at that exact moment when it was clear he was going to die," said Dorothy Looney, his mother. "He just looked up at the sky and said, 'IS this it? IS this what it's like? God, I'm ready.' " The news flashed around the U.S.:Joe Don Looney, the former great college and professional football halfback and punter whose exploits on and off the gridiron were legend, was no more. Football's "Marvel- ous Misfit" had finally met his match. "I was very shocked and felt his life might have been a little better," said Bud Wilkinson, who tried to coach Looney at the University of Oklahoma. "He was an unusual person." IJnusual but never ordinary. In a two-year span in the 1960s Joe Don was an All-American at Oklahoma and a No. 1 NFL draft choice. In 1973 the Nm York Times called him "a handsome devil with Arrow collar features...he threw a block like a house falling down. He could catch passes. He was a superb punter. He had it all-from the neck down." For his obituary the sports scribes dredged up the countless Looney stunts and escapades. They wrote of the doors he kicked in and recounted the brawls. They talked about his scrapes with the law and years spent wandering the world. They interviewed old coaches who claimed they had tried but failed to control him. Most of them shook their heads and said it was too bad Joe Don had wasted his great athletic talent and ruined his life. 'They figured they knew the man so well. They said he was a maniac, an eccentric who searched but never found himself. None of them realized they missed the mark by a country mile. When family and friends gathered for Joe Don's funeral in Alpine, the closest town to the remote retreat he called home, there was much sorrow. But the grieving there wasn't Oklahoma Today

From the book Forty-Seven Straight: "Do you like to p/ay footbal/, Joe Don?" Wilkinson a Min 1962. "Yes, sir, I enjoy it more than anything I've twer done.

50 From the book Forty-Seven Straight: "Do you like to p/ay footbal/, Joe Don?" Wilkinson a Min "Yes, sir, I enjoy it more than anything I've twer done." "Well, then, Joe Don, "persisted Wilkinson, "why in the world are you taiking about leaving.?" "I ran 'tstandgoing to class," said Looney. "I don't have time to get my laundry out." for the dead. Tears flowed for the living. The void Joe Don left behind was bigger than all of the great outdoors. For Joe Don Looney was more than a rampaging jock from the tumultuous 1960s plagued by a "bad boy" image. Like Diogenes, the Greek philosopher who scorned convention as he searched for honesty, Joe Don was a truth-seeker unable to abide the hypocrisy he encountered both in big-time sports and the world at large. "People say he was a Jekyll and Hyde type," said Janine Sagert, Looney's best friend. "He wasn't that at all. Joe Don was always Joe Don. There was no split personality. He was just painfully honest. So many people never did realize that simple fact." orn October 10,1942, in San Angelo, Texas, Joe Don was a pure Libra child. Independent and sensitive, even as a boy he treasured truth and justice more than profit, happiness more than fame. His mother, Dorothy, was a Texas beauty I from an old ranchingclan. His father, Don, the son of a poor dirt farmer, was a football star at Texas Christian University in the 1930s. Don Looney went on to play with the Philadelphia Eagles and became an NFL official for twelve years while building a prosperous oil business. The Looneys were a blend of quintessential Western breeding, good looks, physical prowess, and money. Joe Don was their only child. "My son was no angel-he was a real boy," said Don Looney, "but he always had so much to offer, so much to give. He was different. A lot of folks just didn't understand him." It was clear early in Joe Don's life that misunderstanding was to follow him wherever he went. Caught in a crossfire between a daddy who wanted his son to excel at football and a mama who didn't want her boy's natural good looks marred, Joe Don developed what some folks termed an "attitude problem" toward authority figures while still an undersized school kid. "Joe Don could never stand a phony," said Dorothy Looney. "Even though he was a child, he had the ability to see right through people who didn't deal in the truth." While his parents argued about him playing football, Joe Don began working out with weights. By the time he was ready for high school, his body and his speed were both well-developed. But instead of pulling on a jersey and pads, Joe Don was chosen to be a cheerleader, a job most macho Westerners figured to be girl's work. "Somebody has to do it," he told his disappointed father. To ease the sting, Joe Don made the track team and played baseball. After a brief stint at a Florida military academy, Joe Don returned to Fort Worth and Paschal High School where in his senior year he gained a reputation as a star running back and a hot head. Once Joe Don supposedly chased a Golden Gloves boxer who became so terrorized that he locked himself in a car trunk to escape Looney. In one version of the story, Joe Don's fury burned so hot that he bought a quart of beer from a convenience store, splashed it on the car, then leaned over the trunk and told the cowering pugilist inside that it was gasoline. Joe Don came by his combative spirit naturally. The Looney family had had its share of contrary ancestors. Great-grandfather Looney down in Alabama had been so opposed to slavery that he fought with the Union during the Civil War, and Joe Don's grandfather was a spry ninety-five when he knocked the hell out of a man during a nursing home fist fight. When Joe Don was ready for college, the long hours spent with barbells and slamming his fists into punching bags had paid off: he was in superb physical condition. Joe Don marched off to the University of Texas in Austin and promptly decided to try out for the track team. He also took time to flirt with fraternity life, make lousy grades, watch soap operas, swig beer, and break many a coed's heart with his Hollywood good looks. Looney lasted a semester. He never ran a lap. "Joe Don really wanted to run track at the University of Texas, but he found out he didn't like it there," said Don Looney. "So then he came home to go to Texas Christian and discovered he was ineligible and was going to have to sit out of sports for a while. That upset him." Obsessed with physical fitness, Joe Don continued his regimen of marathon workouts and weight training. After a semester, he was ready to move on. That's when Joe Don met Leroy Montgomery, a straight-shooter who treated his players fairly and like adults. He would be the only coach Looney ever really respected. In September, 1961, Montgomery-a native Okie who in- Oklahoma Today

vested most of his life in the game as a player, coach, and professional scout-was running the football program at Cameron Junior College in Lawton, when he first heard the name Joe Don Looney.

51 vested most of his life in the game as a player, coach, and professional scout-was running the football program at Cameron Junior College in Lawton, when he first heard the name Joe Don Looney. "I was in my office at Cameron, and I got a call from a guy down in Texas who told me he had a new player for my team," recalled Montgomery. "He said this Looney kid punted the hell out of the ball and ran like a deer. I told him to forget it, I already had enough talent. Then a half hour later, the phone rings again and it was Don Looney. He told me all about his son. He said he understood I had a full squad but he really wanted his boy to play for me. All I had to do was to give him a chance. He said he'd pick up the tab if the kid couldn't earn a scholarship. Couldn't refuse that offer. I told him to send Joe Don to me." Joe Don was ecstatic about the prospect of playing for Cameron even though his initial meeting with Montgomery was less than cordial. "The evening Joe Don reported, it was raining and we moved practice inside the field house," said Montgomery. "He didn't show up on time, so I sent a boy to fetch him. When Joe Don finally walked in, I proceeded to chew on his ass for ten minutes-really ate him out. When I finished, I stuckout my hand and introduced myself. After that, 1 never had a bit of trouble with Joe Don. It was always 'yes sir' and 'no sir.' I was honest with him and fair, and that's what I got back. That's all he ever wanted. My door was always and often arrived late to practice. But the strapping 207-pound halfback with blinding speed also turned heads whenever he came near a football. The first game of the season established the Looney legend. Down three to zip against a tough Syracuse team with 2:57 left on the clock, Oklahoma was on the brink of defeat. Near the Sooner bench, Joe Don paced the sideline like a caged wolf. When he could stand it no longer, he walked up to Wilkinson and said, "Bud, put me in there, and I'll win this (game) for you." Amazed that anyone, especially a newcomer, would talk to him in such a manner, much less call him by his first name, Wilkinson did as he was told. Looney, eyes glazed over, ran to the huddle. "Gimme that damned ball," he ordered the quarterback. "I'm gonna score a touchdown." "I knew what play I was going to call when I went into the huddle," quarterback Monte Deere later said in the locker room, but "I just gave him the ball." On the next play from scrimmage, Joe Don delivered. He broke through the line, stumbled, and recovered, then turned on his speed and tore down the sideline. With the Sooner fans screaming their approval, Joe Don never looked back. He raced sixty yards for the winning touchdown. There was still 207 left to play. Joe Don was a truth-seeker unable to abide the hypocrisy he open for Joe Don. He was as good encountered both in bi-e sportr and the world at large a kid as I ever coached." Don Looney never received a bill for his son's tuition. Joe Don became the school's leading runner and punter and led the team to an undefeated season and a triumph over Bakersfield Junior College in the Little Rose Bowl in Pasadena. "He played in that game with a hurt knee that was so swollen he could only fit into practice pants," said Montgomery. "It looked funny in the game, but did that kid ever put out. He averaged more than forty yards a punt, including a fifty-two-yarder, made maybe a half-dozen saving tackles, and swept over Bakersfield's end for the winning touchdown. It was a tremendous effort on his part, but that's what I always got from Looney." A shoo-in for junior college All-American, Joe Don-despite his reputation for being a nonconformist-found an abundance of major college recruiters sniffing around his door. But the one school that appealed to Joe Don above all the rest was Oklahoma, where Bud Wilkinson had built a football dynasty. Montgomery, aware that Looney would be the first junior college transfer to join the Sooners, strongly advised against Joe Don going to the big state university in Norman. "I told him those people weren't used to junior college players and that those boys had been playing together for a couple of years and he wouldn't fit in. But Joe Don was determined to go to Oklahoma. He had his mind made up, and that was that." Joe Don appeared at Oklahoma's fall practice in 1962 and immediately got off to a poor start by refusing to pose for team photographs. He also avoided treatment in the training room Things were never quite the same at Oklahoma. For every big play made by Looney, there was a story. He finished the season leading the country in punting and gained 852yards rushing to rank fifth nationally. He made All-Conference and was selected for one All-America team. But even though he was a catalyst in the Sooners' drive to win Wilkinson his final Big Eight championship and a trip to the Orange Bowl, Looney's theatrics also caused him grief. He was a nonconformist in the days before it was fashionable. Just as Leroy Montgomery had predicted, ~ oe Don never meshed with most of the members of the Sooner team. In When Allthe LaughterDiedin Som, his best seller about the strange world of football, Lance Rentzel, another member of that Sooner team, talks about his friendship with Looney and the drudgery of playing for Wilkinson. "Practice was a series of drills that were as much fun as boot camp in the Marines," wrote Rentzel. "Wilkinson had a regimen that made us think we were prisoners on Devil's Island." It was no place for a free spirit like Joe Don. Eventually, Looney found a pal in John Flynn, a 225-pound Bad Boy who some say egged Looney on from bad to worse. Rentzel, however, remembers it differently. "They were really tremendous," Rentzel said of Flynn and Looney. "They didn't give a damn about what others said or thought or pretended to think. They were completely themselves. They were very talented and tough." That wouldn't, however, be enough to keep Joe Don at September-October1992

52 Oklahoma. For the 1963 season-wilkinson's swan song at Oklahoma-Joe Don came back to campus beefed up to 227 pounds and faster than before. Word was Wilkinson didn't want Looney to return, but Joe Don told his coach that he had taken his advice and seen a psychiatrist during the summer. Joe Don worked hard those first few weeks, but it wasn't long before the coaching staff claimed they found Joe Don more independent and obstinate than ever. They said he'd become bored at practice and would skip workouts if he felt too tired. Joe Don countered that he knew his body better than the coaches. "Why run during the day when it's so hot?" questioned Looney. "I like to run early in the morning when it's dark and cool. It's much better 6 for your body." 5 Despite the conflicts, Joe Don was wearing his familiar number thirty-three when the 8 season got under way that September. After rallying from 5 behind to subdue Clemson in the opener, Oklahoma took on defending NCAA champion and No. 1-ranked Southern California. It was a sweltering afternoon in Los Angeles, and Joe Don sped into the end zone on a pictureperfect, nineteen-yard double reverse for the game's first TD. "There wasn't anybody around," Joe Don said after the Oklahoma victory, which vaulted the Sooners into the No. 1 spot. "Everybody was layin' down." The future finally appeared bright for but it on'~ took a few days for Joe Don's star to turn into a comet. It came after the third game of the season-a 28-7 loss to arch rival and No. 2-ranked Texas. That's when Wilkinson finally gave him the boot. The popular story was that Joe Don had punched out an assistant coach during an argument on the practice field. "Looney has been dismissed from the squad for disciplinary reasons," was Wilkinson's official comment on the matter. "It was just something that had to be done." 0thers disagreed. "People are always talking about that punching business," said Don Looney. "First of all, it was during a scrimmage, and it was a student assistant coach who was holding a blocking dummy. This fella grabbed Joe Don by the face mask, and that's when Joe Don knocked him loose. He was provoked. You never ever grab a guy's face mask unless you want to get knocked on your ass." Joe Don himself said that Wilkinson, his mind already on "I hada lot ofgreat footba/lplaye whert I WUJ UJ vmu,~urriu, Wilkinson,/ef once said. '"Buthe player everyone a/ways wants ro know about andasks mefirst about is Joe Don Looney. I'//nee,er undentandth~.'' leaving the coaching profession to run for the Senate the next year, was upset about not winning a national championship following the humiliating Texas defeat, his sixth straight loss to Texas and its rising star of a coach, Darrell Royal. It was Royal, a former Sooner, who later won the 1963 national championship. Said Joe Don: "After he (Wilkinson) screwed that up, he needed a quick scapegoat, and the logical person was me. I punched that assistant before the Texas game. I think Wilkinson resented me being on the team from the start. I hadn't come up through the indoctrination program like the other guys. This made me an outsider." Lance Rentzel backed up Joe Don's story. "He just didn't have the patience to be a disciplined part of a team. If he didn't feel like it, he simply didn't work. Early in the season, before the Texas game, he was fooling around at practice and Coach Wilkinson said if he wasn't going to put out, he could just go on in. Joe Don looked at him and then called his bluff, 1guess; he picked up his helmet and left. Wilkinson gestured for him to come back...the other guys didn't appreciate the way Looney had defied the coach and gotten away with it. Wilkinson recognized this and kicked him off the squad a week later." Joe Don's career at Oklahoma had lasted only fourteen games-longer than some of his critics had predicted. Col- iege days were over, but pro ball bc~koned- Looney was a first-round draft pick by the New York Giants in Allie Sherman, the Giants' coach, was convinced he and veteran players like Y.A. Tittle and Frank Gifford could make Looney a team player. Dead wrong. At the Giants' training camp, Joe Don drew a quick fine when he refused to have his ankles taped before scrimmages. "I know my ankles better than you do," he told the amazed coaches. "It's better for them not to be taped. If you want to fine me, go ahead and fine me." When Joe Don thought a meeting was unnecessary, he skipped it. He also cut practices without permission. Fined for missing curfew by ten minutes, Joe Don protested that he had checked in an hour earlier the previous night. "You owe me fifty minutes," he protested. Don Chandler, then a veteran punter with the Giants, was Looney's roommate at camp. "They knew he was going to be a problem, so they put Joe Don with me because I was from, Oklahoma Today

Oklahoma. It was obvious that he was a young man wit'l great physical talent who was not ready mentally to play the gameand not because he was dumb. He was anything but stupid.

53 Oklahoma. It was obvious that he was a young man wit'l great physical talent who was not ready mentally to play the gameand not because he was dumb. He was anything but stupid. I found him quiet, and he kept to himself. But he just wouldn't conform to the rules. Playing games wasn't important to him, money wasn't important to him. Being himselfwas important to Joe Don." Chandler remembers the day Y.A. Tittle, the Giants' star quarterback, tried to reason with Looney. "Tittle was practically old enough to be Joe Don's dad. He went in the room and closed the door, and we all waited outside. They were in there for a long time, and finally Tittle comes out shaking his head and smiling. He just looked at us and said, 'You know, I went in there to sway that kid, but I think he ended up swaying me.' " Joe Don couldn't sway management. They soon grew weary of him missing practices, ignoring the coaches, and refusing to learn the play book. He was a loner and preferred reading Ayn Rand and listening to his stereo. "You felt like you were working with an unfinished song," said Allie Sherman. Joe Don lasted twenty-eight days with the Giants. Before the season even started, they traded him to the Baltimore Colts where Looney went or to help Don Shula win the 1964 Western Conference championship. But, like the others, Shula never got a handle I on the unpredictable Joe Don. "I was afraid to put Looney in the game to punt.," Shula later admitted to reporters, "because I didn't know if he would punt. He might do anything." One afternoon during warm-ups, Looney showed his defiant side when he took a snap and kicked the football as high as he could straight up in the air. As he stood there, hands on his hips, watching the ball soar into the heavens, Joe Don yelled, "How do you like that, God?" The Sattlrday EveningPostthat year said Joe Don "runs like a wild horse, blocks like a marble tombstone, and punts with the power of a bazooka. The only trouble is, nobody knows for sure whether he's going to play the game or start throwing punches." The Colts failed to break Looney's spirit. They shipped him off to the Detroit Lions, where coach Harry Gilmer predicted Looney would "save the franchise." The honeymoon was short-lived. During a heated contest with the Atlanta Falcons, Looney refused to carry a play to the Lions' huddle. "If you want a messenger," he told Gilmer, "then call Western Union." Joe Don was history in Detroit. Next stop: Washington, D.C. Joe Don fared no better with the Redskins and coach Otto Graham. "He didn't know what he wanted," Looney said of Graham. "I could organize a practice better than he could." Joe Don's playing days were numbered. Leon Cross, a Sooner co-captain during Joe Don's 017 days who still lives in Norman and works with the team, be- lieves Looney was a casualty of his time. "In those days football was more of a team sport. You were taught the team always came first, and an individualist couldn't really fit in that model," says Cross. "Joe Don was one of the most talented athletes of his day, and that's why all the pro teams took chances on him. It's why they all tried. Every coach thought, 'I can handle him,' but none of them could. "Joe Don was one of football's first rebels. He'd fit in very well today." Looney was told to report to a different kind of team-uncle Sam's. Joe Don's Army Reserve unit as activated, and he received orders to go to Vietnam. I;urious, he sued the federal government for breach of contract. To his mind the government had the right to call men to active duty only in a war or national emergency. Vietnam didn't fit either definition. "In a national emergency," Looney said, "they wouldn't have to call me. I would be down there and ready to go. All we want to point out is that if the government can do this to us, think what it can do to the individual citizen. It takes a lot ofguts to stand up for your rights in the Army. A lot of ;uys try to bribe the iraft board or leave the :ount ry... I said to myrelf, 'Joe, if you do that, then you're going to be just like all the people you don't like.' " He finally reported for duty and promptly went AWOL for twenty-five days before reluctantly serving nine months in Vietnam guarding a fuel depot near the DMZ. Like thousands of others who opposed the war, Vietnam was the last place Looney wanted to be. "In the Army he still looked out for the little guy," said his father. "He was like that all his life-always for the underdog." When another soldier was bullied by a bunch of GIs, Joe Don intervened. "He made an announcement in front of the whole bunch," said Don Looney, "if they wanted to whip up on the little fella, that was fine, but they were going to have to come through Joe Don first. The guy had no problems after that." Joe Don's situation, however, got worse, and his refusal to carry a rifle didn't help matters. "What are you going to do, send me to Vietnam?" he asked his incredulous superiors. When he came home, it was clear that more than the war was over for Joe Don. He felt disoriented and lost. "Joe Don was different when he got back from Vietnam," said Don Looney. "It was a long time before he could sleep at night." Joe Don played a final season with the New Orleans Saints before retiring because of a nagging injury. He also divorced his wife, Peggy, and left her and their daughter, Tara, on an east Texas farm. He was ready to launch a round-the-globe odyssey in order to restore his faith in the world. He went to Hong Kong with a boyhood friend and bought a sailboat. He experimented with drugs and investigated a variety of religions. He fasted for forty days. He lived in South September-October 1992

In Looney 'sfirst ( zrterback Monte Deere reca//s, Looney walked vide wearing a one-day stubb/e of beard atzd with his arms bulging beneath his redjeney sleeues.

54 In Looney 'sfirst ( zrterback Monte Deere reca//s, Looney walked vide wearing a one-day stubb/e of beard atzd with his arms bulging beneath his redjeney sleeues. We ca//edhim 'Bbto' afer the character in the Popeye cartoon strip." OU was behind with 257 left oort the c/ock and Looney's eyes M a phos~horescentg/eam. "It looked /ire fire was coming out of them," reca/ls Deere. At right, Looney in A/pine. America for a while. He was jailed for possession of marijuana. He was implicated but cleared in a plot to murder a Texas judge. He became a vegetarian, gave himself enemas, and dropped seventy pounds. He began to read Nietzsche and Hesse as well as Spinoza and John Milton and Ganai Yoga. He kept looking for the truth. After years of wandering and self-examination, Joe Don was at the end of his rope. His search for truth seemed hopeless. He could find no remedy for his anger, brought on by the dishonesty he encountered everywhere. Then in 1975Joe Don met Swami Muktananda at the Houston airport. The sage from India was touring the states, and Joe Don understood that Muktananda taught that inner peace comes through meditation. Looney went to hear the simple message and was immediately mesmerized. The reception room at the airport was filled with people bearing gifts for Baba, as his followers called Muktananda. Looney had nothing. "All I have for you is the love from my heart," said Joe Don. The Indian holy man nodded, and Joe Don turned to leave. Then Baba spoke. "The heart is the most valuable possession," he said. Joe Don stopped and whirled around. He knew he had found at last an honest man whose love and acceptance of other people were unconditional. Baba was the best experience for Joe Don since he was a kid playing his heart out for Leroy Montgomery. Sitting with Baba and watching him, Joe Don began to at last comprehend the full range of human potentiality. He gave up drugs and became a devotee. Like Joe Don, Baba possessed the spontaneity of a child as well as the wisdom of a man who had found the answers to all his questions. "There was always an emptiness in me until I met Baba," said Joe Don. "He tells you to love yourself and see God in each other. I had everything, but I just wasn't happy until I found Baba." Joe Don followed Muktananda on a spiritual journey to India. There Joe Don was given the job of caring for Vijay, a rogue elephant. It was a humbling and often dangerous assignmentcleaning up giant piles of elephant dung and washing a beast as headstrong as its keeper. Baba knew just what he was doing. Joe Don tried to work with the temperamental elephant, but the animal was as mean as a big-time linebacker. Looney would become frustrated and slam his fist into the obstinate animal's side. It was like hitting a concrete wall. But through Baba, Looney learned there were easier ways to get alongwith both people and beasts. At last he learned how to deal with raw power. "I realized that you can win anything with love," said Joe Don. He and Vijay learned to respect one another. Baba gave his star pupil the spiritual name Hanumanji. In Hindu myth, Hanuman-son of the god ofwind-was a monkey warrior tall as a tower who could leap so high he seized the clouds. In one courageous deed he helped Ram, a human form of the god Vishnu, rescue his wife, Sita, who had been kidnapped by a demon-king. The name acknowledged just how far Joe Don had come. "It doesn't matter if he didn't make it in pro football," said Baba. "He made it here. He's a champion." In 1982Muktananda was seventy-four years old when he had a heart attack and died. Joe Don was devastated, but his faith pulled him through. He celebrated the time he had spentwith his beloved Baba. He went to Thailand and Tahiti, and then Joe Don came home. Thanks to some investments and a lifestyle that was anything but lavish, he had enough money to get by on. He bought twenty-two acres just a few miles outside Alpine, Texas, and built a geodesic dome of cedar. It was solar-heated and as solid as granite. An old man with a forked stick found a deep well of sweet water. Joe Don planted a vegetable garden and a grove of fruit trees. Inside the house were plenty of beds for guests, hundreds of philosophy and spiritual books, a separate room for his weights and punching bag, and a small meditation chamber permeated with the odor of incense. There was no telephone. Joe Don cherished his solitude but became a familiar face in the small town of Alpine. He'd leave groceries at the local rest home for the elderly folks. Girls' basketball and high school football became important to him. During the autumn he OklahomaToday

55 would cover long miles to cheer himself hoarse while his favorite football teams-usually an underdog made goodstruggled down the field. For Joe Don, the innocence and courage of small-town football was the purest form of sport. He and Leroy Montgomery-his link to the old days-kept in touch and planned to build a boys' camp for wayward kids who needed a boost. "Joe Don had a soft spot in his heart for the losers of the world," said Montgomery. "He was always willing to help them out." Joe Don had finally found the way of life that suited him. His parents, divorced since 1966but still good friends, spent as much time as possible with their son. Joe Don was busy building them a residence, with separate bedrooms, just up the hill from his dome. His own home became a place that people went to renew themselves. "I could come away from my hectic life and have my roots watered at Joe Don's," said Harmon Lisnow, a deputy attorney general in Texas. "Few of us really understand true freedom but Joe Don did...it hacked a lot of people off, but he was always honest. He forced all of us to question ourselves.and through it all, he bowed to no one. He was truly a warrior-a spiritualwarrior-and I loved him for that." eptember 24, 1988,was a Saturday. It was game day across the nation. Joe Don rose early, meditated, and slipped intojeans and a windbreaker. On this day he and his friend Tom Connor, a home builder from Alpine, were going to ride their motorcycles seventy-five miles to the Rio Cirandeand take part in a raft race. After days of watching the Seoul Olympics on television, Joe Don was pumped up, his competitive juices flowing. His two big Ridgeback dogs, Ram and Sita, both as stubborn and loyal as the man they adored, sensed his excitement as he gulped juice and herbal tea. Tom arrived in the morning darkness, and Joe Don fired up his Suzuki 850, and the two friends sped off to Highway 118. Ram and Sita loped alongside, but at the top of the hill Joe Don told them to stop, and they stood watchingas he rode off toward the distant mountainsthat guard the Big Bend country. For the first time that Tom could remember, Joe Don was wearing a helmet. The two friendsraced down the highway, crossingdry creek beds and old Indian trails, passingpeaks and the ruins of homesteads. Tom pulled away from Joe Don and led the way. He soon lost sight of his friend but assumed he was close behind. "It was such a fine ride that morning," recalled Tom. "It was awfully pretty." The sun was softening the desert landscape, and all the - twists and turns were behind when Joe Don came up a steep hill. He saw the road flattening out before him bending into a gentle curve. It took hours for Tom and law officers to find Joe Don's body. He was just a couple of weeks from his fortysixth birthday-an age when most men are worrying about coronarydiseaseand getting fat, the agewhen T.E. Lawrence, the mysterious hero of Arabia, died in a motorcycle accident. "No one knows what caused Joe Don to crash," said Connor. "I'm sure that at the moment it happened, he was joyed. I'm certain he saw there was no use to fight it. There was no holding back." After the simple funeral at the Geeslin Funeral Home, Joe Don was cremated. His mother kept his ashes and the Bible she gave him years before inscribed, "1 place you in God's hands." Friends and family went out tojoe Don's land,walked around, and watched the Ridgeback dogs chase over the hills. Ram was restless,as if he were waiting for his warrior to come riding home. To mark his birthday, Dorothy and a friend drove down Highway 118 and went to the gentle curve where he died. Dorothy spied a snatch of her boy's windbreaker snagged on a branch. They found the place under the mesquite tree where his head came to rest, and they left a pile of rocks. They stood and listened to the eternal wind. When they left they were smiling. Tu/sanMichael Walks is author of Pretty Boy: The Life and Times of Charles Arthur Floyd. GilAdams is a Tulsa-basedi//ustrator. Getting There To date, no biography of Joe Don Looney has been pub/ished. Thehighlights (andsorepoints) of Looney 2 careerat OU, both on and ofthe tu$ appear in Forty-Seven Straight: The Wilkinson Era at Oklahoma, by former OlI ditzctor of sports information Harold Keith. Keith's book, a paean to coach Bud Wilkinson,is hard on Looney and omits thepunching incident; it a/so shows why the straight a mw roach and Looney were an a// but impossib/ematch. Thebook,pub/ished in 1984, is availab/e from 011Pressfor$ To order, ca// (405) TheSoo~zerxat-home/in( up thisfa// is: September 12, us. Arknnsas State; September 19, vs. Southern Ca/ (to be teleuised); October-3, us. Iowa State (Homecomingj;October31, m. Kansas State; November 7,us. Missouri;and November 27, vs. Nebraska (Thanksgiving,to be te/euised.) For ticket information, ca// (405) L September-October 1992

Wine Country A tr@into Cimarron ~ezzars' hen Dwayne 3 Pool first de- F cided he want- 2' ed to own a I I vineyard back in the early 1970s, you would have expected him to start in his own backyard:

56 Wine Country A tr@into Cimarron ~ezzars' hen Dwayne 3 Pool first de- F cided he want- 2' ed to own a I I vineyard back in the early 1970s, you would have expected him to start in his own backyard: Napa Valley. Instead, the grocery manager and his wife, Suze, began looking in Oklahoma where Pool's parents were from. They did this for two rea- I sons: One, land prices in northern California were so high only the rich could afford to buy land good for growing grapes. And two, in southern Oklahoma they have found perfect growing conditions: fertile soilloamy and sandy, with good - drainage-and a climate with mild winters. that a federally planted vineyard near Caney was for sale (it the Dokie (red). The Murethal Foch 1983,u red, wasoldutrlle Mark Ous they purchased Hopkins Hotelin Sun Francisco for$l4a bottle. uyou cat~gcfot/e black rot (a fungus that literally mummifies the pea-size grape). You can grow those varieties in California because they don't get the early rains in spring that we do." So what grapes will grow in Oklahoma? A good many varieties that'grow east of the Rocky Mountains, Pool says, including a grape native to hlissouri and Arkansas. Pool has had his best success with a type he calls "French-American hybrids," and while they do not taste like a California wine, they do taste very much like themselves. Pool has found that visitors to the winery from as close as nearby Caney and as far away as England and Sweden like their flavor. He appreciates the fact that When they learned in 1978 i after fourteen years in the business, he seems to finally be on right track. If he'd only had gone through previ- Citnarron Cellon' top.reiiers a+p Bhnc d' Blunc (whtte) and ORie known how busy sllccesswould keep him. From July Septhe 150 acres. The land had ofthe~eqrfmbottlesleftutthewi~~e1~~0~'//p~~$4.25. tember, the winery is a buzz of forty acres of mature vineyards. activity as forty-plus acres of At first, the grapes were sold to various has only recently figured this out. grapes are harvested, washed, crushed, wineries in Texas. In 1983, with an abun- Though he has practically memorized and placed in barrels to ferment. The dance of grapes and a shortage of markets, Philip Wagner's book, GrapesInto Wine, winery produces almost ten thousand the Pools decided to build a winery and a bible for winemakers like himself, Pool gallons of wine per year, including more produce their own wines. learned much of what he knows from than a dozen varieties. "We are not try- Looking back, Pool says he never simply planting a vine and watching it ing to compete with California wineries," doubted he could grow grapes in south- die. "I've learned that you can't go to says Pool. "We want to find the best ern Oklahoma. "You can just look at all Wal-Mart and by a Concord grape or a grapes to grow in this part of the country the wild species of grapes growing in Thompson seedless plant," says Pool, and make the best wine we can make." these woods," Pool says, "and know that "and expect it to grow here." Grapes are harvested from July to Sepyou can grow grapes for wine here." He also learned that the European va- tember by a crew of local laborers and LJltimately there was one small catch: rieties that thrive in northern California neighbors, some barely old enough to it had to be the right variety of grape. don't seem to work, either. The price of drive a Car, others who are well into their Dwayne Pool, a self-taught vider- that lesson: four failed harvests. "We'd seventh decade. Aside from the work culturalist (one who works in the vine- get the vines to the point that they had force, the process is not unlike what yard) and oenologist (one who makes grapes the size of small peas on them," you'd find at any winery: Grapes are imwine), doesn't mind telling you that he recalls Pool, "and then we'd lose them to mediately cleaned, destemmed, and Oklahoma Today

57 crushed. After a thirty day stopover in the fermenting vats, the grapes move to large (from five hundred gallon to twelve hundred gallon) tanks for a secondary fermentation that can last from nine months to a full year. The wine is then bottled and shipped to wholesalers or sold in the Cimarron Cellars Gift Shop. The vineyards and winery are open all year. Dwayne and Suze are glad to give tours of the operation, and they go into great detail to explain winemaking. Tour sizes range from one or two visitors to busloads of organized tour groups. During the busy harvest months, tours may not be available daily, but visitors can pick grapes to take home for homemade jams or jellies or purchase one of the estate wines for this dish: BURGUNDY POT ROAST 5 porlnds rump roast of beef 2 cups Marechal Foch, a dry red wine 1 eight-ounce can tomato sauce 1 clove garlic, minced 1 bay leaf 2 parsley sprigs 112 teaspoon celery salt 112 teaspoon salt tablespoons butter or margarine pound small white onions, peeled cup cold water tablespoons vegetable oil ten-and-one-half-ounce can condensed beef bouillon (undiluted) teaspoon dried leaf thyme whole cloves peppercorns small carrots, pared 1 pound mushrooms, cut in half 1 teaspoon lemon juice 1 tablespoon sugar 2 tablespoons cornstarch 1 cup chopped parsley (optional) Heat oil in heavy kettle and brown meat on all sides. Pour off and discard fat. Add wine, bouillon, tomato sauce, garlic, thyme, bay leaf, cloves, parsley sprigs, peppercorns, and a half teaspoon of the celery salt. Cover. Bring to a boil. Place in a 325"F oven, and roast three to three and a half hours or until meat thermometer registers 170" F. After meat has cooked for two and a half hours, start your vegetables. Put carrots in skillet in enough salted water to cover them. Boil until tender. Drain and discard water. Add two tablespoons but- Specializing in American Indian Art 51st & Memorial-Fontana Center Tulsa, Oklahoma Open Monday-Saturday, a festival of cultures The festival that brings together the cultures of the world to promote rpfeciation and understantling of the eoples of the world and of Oklahoma's rich an diverse heritage. Initiated in 1980, the kstival'draws thousands of visitors tach year. ROSE STATE COLLEGE. orabilia Market. SATURDAY OCTOBER 24 and Museum SEPTEMBER GUTHRIE, OK ALSO APPEARING: %'El ANNUALGUlXRE ROADCELEBRATION - CLASSIC CAR SHOW OUTD~~R ANTIQUE AND CO~C~IBLE W - OVER 120 VENDORS OKLAHOMA FRONTIER DRUGSTORE MUSEUM - GRAND OPENING They have names like Ethel's, Leo's and Slick's. They use plastic tableware, serve spongy white bread and are a far sight less than elegant. But as every fan of barbecue knows, they're also an excellent reason to call Oklahoma home. You can read about someof Oklahoma's favorjte 8-B-Q spots by ordering e back-copy of Oklsh~mToday's Feb issue. $5. To orderjow back issrce, plem uss the wderfomad melopc hide the back cova: Tax andshippint inclnded. September-October 1992

ter to skillet, then saute carrots until I 5 lightly browned. Put carrots on a serving 3 platter and keep warm. Add mushrooms to same skillet. Cook, stirring until tender, sprinkle with lemon juice.

58 ter to skillet, then saute carrots until I 5 lightly browned. Put carrots on a serving 3 platter and keep warm. Add mushrooms to same skillet. Cook, stirring until tender, sprinkle with lemon juice. Add to serving platter with carrots. Cut an " X at one end of each peeled onion. Place onions in a large skillet. Add enough water to cover. Add remaining two tablespoons butter, sugar, and half teaspoon salt. Bring to a boil. Cook until all water evaporates. Shake skillet to brown on- ions. Place onions with other vegetables on platter and keep warm. Remove meat from skillet (when done) and put on serving platter. Skim fat from kettle. Blend cornstarch and one-quarter cup cold water. Bring liquid in kettle to boil. Stir in cornstarch mixture. Cook, stirring constantly unti1 gravy boils and thickens. Serve in gravy boat. If desired, sprinkle roast with chopped parsley. Serves eight. -Debra Robinson Dwayne Po06 (with Wi~zston) in fhe vineyards. The Pools' wine-making is done almost entirely by hand: the picking, crushing, bottling, corking, and labeling. Suze Pool works in the salesroom, so the Pools men sell it by hand. Getting ( There A blue sign to the Cilnarron Ce//am winery sits less than ha&a mile south of Atoka on S.H. / 69: the gifl sho~is on the east side ofthe divided highma~;aorr~of the sign. A change in state law tias allowedthe Pools to begin wine tasritzgs this September. They plan to offer mo to three wines each day ( of fourteen,\ ' varieties they bottle) at the gifr shop, which is open weekends from noon to 5p.m and Saturday 20 a.m. to 5p.m. For tours of the vineyards and winery, call (405) or (405) Durinahamest titne, which runs from July throu~h September, Pool picks durin~ the week so holne klinetjrokerx nrmdjel/y rnakt& run pick their. o~,i~rap~s on we&et~ds (Pool rhaees t/tirly-f;ve rettts a pound). 113en pmni~~ begi~z.r in.vov~ml,er, e9isitors con bu~ (~ittiltgj fro~n thr smenteefi vnriclie.~ of rrabes to t~(~n.rbbjnnl or to w?ifrd if110. rrrwwvitre. wtutrths (thrsr. too. are thirty$ve cents a pbuni). Ciman-on Cel/ars wines (priced$4.25 to $7.25 a bottle) are available at the winery gift shop. They can also be found at retail liquor stores including Byron 's Liquor Wamhouse in Oklahoma City and Fike's Liquor Store in Tulsa. Orjust ask your local retailer, says Pool. e past comes ali\e on this hrilliunt \\ atercolor or~ginnl print of Ol,li~lio~na's Indi:111 (:ountr\, circn This Lh"~l.5.5"[nap i\ one of A h~nd, hnsed on reseiirch for he speclo1 h,~ti\e -2merican issue Okl~rlzonrr 7o(lr1r p~~hl~shed in hia). It shou \ archcologlcal d~g\, old to\\ n\, mis\ions, ngencie\, scl~ocds, hc~ttlefields, torta, camp\ and grd\e s~tes..\s a \\orl\ nrt or 3s tl collector's itell1 to pa\\ do\\n tlirougl~ 1lie genemtions-or hoth- OfiI111onlciTr,rky'.\ Indian (:o~~ntr\ map is a \aludhie additton to tile rti~te'\ h~sttrncal reco~ul. Include5,L 511-page brochure describing map loc'~tion\,~nd prot~d~ng a bibiiogmpl~~to hocths OIL( )hl$ionla.at,,,. A ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~,. F&\wFm a hr~med In n,~tural ltood mid 111.1ttt.d as she\\ 11:$95. I'nfra111t.d:$10. Lim~tecl edit~on s~gried and ~iumberedh\ the artl\t: $50 unh-a~ried: $135 fra~ned l'rinted on h1g11-qua111 I r..,i... /r....a rl..."...i... r...,....i..., I..*., :..-:,I...I ^ 1,..,... Oklahoma Today

60 bake Tenkillel I PA- Oklahoma Today

Taylorsville d They bzlilt it, and they came. 0ne of early signs that the Taylorsville Country Fair was a pretty good idea came that first year in the parking lot-a wide open pasture. By 9 a.m. on the first Saturday of the fair, the field was full, and the dirt road leading to Taylorsville was beginning to be lined with cars.

61 Taylorsville d They bzlilt it, and they came. 0ne of early signs that the Taylorsville Country Fair was a pretty good idea came that first year in the parking lot-a wide open pasture. By 9 a.m. on the first Saturday of the fair, the field was full, and the dirt road leading to Taylorsville was beginning to be lined with cars. The fair wasn'teven scheduled to open until 10 a.m. By noon, says volunteer Ruth Rapier, hay wagons were sent out to haul in visitors hiking in from cars parked a mile away. Food vendors-all of them volunteers-spent the day running out the back gate, off to Stillwater or Ripley for more food, more ice, more... toilet paper. The fact that more than twenty-three thousand visitors actually stayed, after parking miles from nowhere at an event without a track record, is a testament to what they found at the fair. Under the blackjacks turning a faded orange, a wagon train-140 riders strong-pulled in at the fair's beginning. Gunfighters fought, blacksmiths shod horses, and handmade artwork and crafts were admired and bought. "The Orange Blossom Special" pulled dancers to their feet; gospel singers, bluegrass bands, and banjo players alternated until dusk. Women were weaving, spinning, and making bread, butter, soap, and bonnets. One woman made rag dolls for a line of children who otherwise might have been watching Saturday morning cartoons. It was a big surprise but not overwhelming to Oney Taylor who, with his brother, Wayne, owns Taylorsville, a kind of miniature, minimally commercial Silver Dollar City. "We thought it was something pretty wild," says Taylor, "but we just went along with it." If Taylor's comfortable nature hadn't made him already suited to it, events might have forced him to sit back for the ride. He'd seen things snowball in Folk art. fiddles. and food are biz draws at the fall Taylomille Country Fair. Taylorsville before. The initial idea was hatched on a Colorado vacation in "I went out there to a dinner-type deal (where) they had a dinner and a show," he recalls. It got him to thinking. Why not build a place back home that would serve up barbecue and country music on Friday and Saturday nights? More than twentythousand people showed up for the first country fair. And the second. Both his brother, Wayne Taylor, and Oney's son and son-in-law liked the idea, so the four men began to build a barn with a kitchen, stage, and seating for two hundred. "We started by cutting cedar poles and peeling the bark by hand." Though he never drew it out in an official blueprint ("it's all in my head"), Oney already had planned on building a little Western town, with storefronts and a covered bridge or two. When he learned that a nephew by marriage was planning to tear down a 1909 farmhouse, he decided to move that out to the family property, too. Local folks soon began to clamor to come out to the place they-not the Taylors-named Taylorsville. Visitors rented the barn for weddings, reunions, banquets, and meetings in such numbers that plans for the restaurant remained that: plans. "It was just public demand that sidetracked us," Oney says. It was the neighbors, again, who suggested everybody pitch in next and have a fair to raise money for the local schools. "Ginger Tunnel1 said, 'We ought to hold a country fair, where people could display pioneer handicrafts and demonstrate frontier skills,' " Oney recalls. He was less than enthusiastic. "I was leery about it, at first," he admits. "I didn't think people would drive all the way out here." But as word spread about the plan, an army of rural residents and organizations called to volunteer. Patsy Lile, who owns Patsy's Flowers September-October 1992

and Ceramics in Perkins, organized the arts and crafts, and Marcia Hargrove, a teacher by day and member of a bluegrass band by night, lined up local bluegrass, gospel, and country and western talent.

62 and Ceramics in Perkins, organized the arts and crafts, and Marcia Hargrove, a teacher by day and member of a bluegrass band by night, lined up local bluegrass, gospel, and country and western talent. Ruth Rapier, who served on the hospitality committee, tended to the performers, artists, and fairgoers. Her role, she says, was to "mainly stand around and hug people." Since that first fair, the road has been graveled, and more parking has been added. But, as the third fair gets under way this fall, its organizers best hope is that the fair will stay the same. Oney Taylor, for one, doesn't plan on going Hollywood anytime soon. "I'm just plain; that's the way I am," he says. "I don't plan on changing." -Sharon A. Wright Get a pmim of Tay/omi//e on September 19, when Martin De/ Ray is scheduledto pdom. And keep an qe out for future concerts; last year, Taylor brought George Jones andmark Chestnut to Tay/omi/fe. (405) The Tay/omi//e Country Fair is set for October 3 and 4, rain or shine. TaylomiiLe is east of Highway 177, between Perkins and StifIwater. From S.H. 177, dhefour miles east on Mehan Road, then one anda hagmiles ' - south (watch for the signs). Fair hours are 10a.m. to 6p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 5p.m. on Sunday. Admission is two dof/ars forpenons auer twelve years. Along with arts and crafs booths and demonstrations of o/d-jashioned skil/s, /oca/ biuegrass, country and western, andgospef bands are scheduuled to p/ay aery hour, along with the blilegrass band The his Fami4 from Georgia. Booths se/ling barbecue and Indian tacos mi// be scattered around the homestead, and the Sti//water Kiwanis wi//sel/ lunch andsupper both days. Loca/ chapters of the Futum Fanners of America sponsor a petting zoo andpony rides. For more infomation, ca// the Stillwater Chamber of Commerce, (405) Let Off Some Steam trying to CQO~jrouP oakd oh "SjmcWyg@ forpwspcinlavidor" I OPEN 11 WXYm 7AX-7P.M. SAT.&SUN 9 AN-5P.bL WlLLRoc~~w~l~~AmaarlhmGILWmmwt IVIBTORS FLIGHT CREW CITILO I \VXK (out II~ \late) Please use orderform utzd eselelope inside the buck cover. Oklahoma Today

63 CALEN DAR Feting King 0 5 Cotton L or'uaanzu corronf;e'd Sept. 18 In fall, the fields along State Highway 5 are white with the high-quality cotton that farmers in Tillman and surrounding counties ship to ports around the world. Cotton still is king here, and nowhere 1IS that more apparent than in Frederick during the annual Cotton Festival. On September 18, the courthouse lawn sprouts arts and crafts and food booths under its shade trees, cloggers dance on a temporary stage, andaquilt show hangs in thecourthouse halls. At the Tillman County Historical Museum across the street, a slew of farm machinery will be on display, along with demonstrations ofcottoncarding, cotton stripping, and cotton picking. The annual Maid of Cotton pageant will begin at 7 p.m. at the restored 1920s' era Ramona Theatre (a drawing for a hand-painted quilt with a cotton boll design is a local tradition). For information, call (405) BP MUSEUMS AND GALLERILS SEPTEMBER 1-10 Dinosaurs!, Omniplcx Scicnce Museum, OKC, (405) I-Oct. 18 Oklahoma Heritage, Center of the American Indian, Kirkpatrick Center, OKC, (405) Miniature Native American Artifacts, Plains Indian and Pioneers Museum, Woodward, (405) Oct. 12 The Long Artifact Exhibit, Five Civilized Tribes Museum, Muskogee, (918) I-Oct. 23 Nat'l Watercolor Oklahoma, Kirkpatrick Galleries, Kirkpatrick Center, OKC, (405) Oct Nov Jan Oct. 19 Jerome Tiger Retn)spective, Five Civilized Tribes Museum, Muskogee, (918) French Paintings of Three Centuries from the New Orleans Museum of Art, Oklahoma City Art Museum, OKC, (405) 'I'heThriIIofVictory:'TheScienceofSports,Omniplex, OKC, (405) Visions of India, Gardiner Art Gallery, OSIJ, Stillwater, (405) 'The Greenhouse: A Sandy Skoglund Installation, Fred Jones Jr. Muscum of Art, Norman, (405) OCTOBER 1-31 Masks by Patrick Riley, Paul Medina, John Richardson, and Clint Hamilton, Charles B. Goddard Center. Ardmore, (405) Goya's Disasters of War and The Proverbs Exhibit, Philbrook Museum of Art, 'Tulsa, (918) An Enduring Interest: 'The Photographs of Alexander Gardncr, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, (918) Birds of Prey, Oklahoma Museum of Natural History, Norman, (405) Masters' Exhibition, Five Civilized Tribes Museum, Muskogee, (918) Bah-Kho-Je Fall Art Fair, Bah-Kho-JeArtGallery,Coyle, (405) Children's Cowboy Festival, Nat'l Cowboy Hall of Fame, OKC, (405) Dudes. Darlins, and Devils:'I'heStoryofthe 101 Ranch, Oklahoma City Arts Museum at ArtsPlace, OKC. (405) SEPTEMBER 1-20 The Fantasticks, Jewel Box Theatre, OKC, (405) Rumon, Carpenter Square Theatre, OKC, (405) TbeManWhoCametoL)it,ner,EnidCommunity Theatre, Gaslight Theatrc, Enid, (405) I.endMea Tenor, Theatrc 'Tulsa, Tulsa, (918) The lnlporranre of Being E~an~est, John Denney Playhouse, Lawton. (405) Critnes ofthe Heart, Sapirlpa Community Theatre, Sapulpa, (918) Oct.3 Chess,Shawnee 1,ittle 'I'hcatre, Shawnee, (405) Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Ardmore 1,ittle Theatre, Ardmore, (405) Oct. 3, Nunsense, Ponca Playhouse, Ponca City, (405) OCTOBER 1-3 The JungIe Book and beau^ andthe Beast, John Denney Playhouse, Lawton, (405) TallTales,Seem-to-be-Players, Performing ArtsCenter, 7-Nov. 1 Tulsa, (918) I Hute Hamlet, Jewcl Box Theatre, OKC, (405) September-October 1992

64 Looking Back at Jerome Tiger Sept. 12-Oct. 12 In 1967, the Five Civilized Tribes sponsored a one-man show of a young local Creek-Seminole painter Jerome Tiger, an artist whose lyricism and technical ability was such that critics forgot themselves and used the g-word. Genius. Tiger's career would be tragically short; before the year was out he died in an accident. But in the five years he worked seriously as an artist, Tiger created a style of Indian art uniquely his own: more traditional than contemporary but influential enough that its effects ripple still. Visitors come from all over the country to see eloquent depictions of stickball players, dancers, grandparents, and other Native American themes in the museum's Tiger collection, the best anywhere. If Tiger's work is put in storage to make way for other exhibits, "we hear about it," says manager Diane Haralson. Nochanceof thatcomeseptember 12,when themuseum will mount a month-long Tiger retrospective, the first in twenty-five years. The museum will hang as many paintings and drawings as the walls of the small Muskogee museum will r hold. "We'll show his $ significant pieces and larger 5 pieces and those depicting 2 traditions," says Haralson. k "That's what this museum $ has tried hard to protect and to encourage." The museum, in the historic Union Indian Agency building in Muskogee, is open Monday tosaturday, 10a.m. to5 p.m., Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Admission is $2 for adults, Zgerkfmoritepainting: $1 for ages six to twelve. War Peace, Death (918) BP Life, 1966 M-Butzerfly, Pollard Theatre, Guthrie, (405) Unc& Rufus I, Black Liberated Arts Center, Civic Center Little Theatre, OKC, (405) Sid the Serpent Who Wanted To Sing, Cimarron Circuit Opera Company, Sooner Theatre, Norman, (405) Barber ofseeille, Cimarron Circuit Opera Company, Sooner Theatre, Norman, (405) The Mystery of Irma Vep,Pollard Theatre, Guthrie, (405) ThGlass Menagen'e, Enid Community Theatre, Gaslight Theatre, Enid, (405) Anne of Green Gables, Theatre Tulsa, Tulsa, (918) MU siliuai\jce SEPTEMBER 3-6 World Series of Fiddling Festival, Powderhorn Park, Langley, (405) u Western Swing Festival, Osage County Fairgrounds, Pawhuska, (918) Dallas Black Dance Theater, Civic Center Music Hall, OKC, (405) Smokey Robinson, Brady Theater, Tulsa, (918) Don Quixote, Tulsa Ballet Theater, Chapman Hall, Tulsa, (918) OKC Philharmonic Classics Concert, Civic Center Music Hall, OKC, (405) Woods County Opry, Act I Theatre Building, Downtown, Alva, (405) Bob WillsTexasPlayboys Reunion, BelleStarr Theater, Eufaula, (918) Works by Three Oklahoma Composers, Norman Chamber Orchestra, Holmberg Hall, Norman, (405) OCTOBER 3 Concert, Lawton Philharmonic, Lawton, (405) "Pops Perfection," Performing Arts Center, Tulsa, (918) Prague Chamber Orchestra, Scottish Rite Temple, Guthrie, (405) Columbus Day Celebration, Performing Arts Center, Tulsa, (918) Richard Dowlingin Concert, Simmons Center, Duncan, (405) Symphony at Sunset, Riverparks Festival West, Tulsa, (918) The Side Street Strutters, Charles B. Goddard Center, Ardmore, (405) Tulsa Philharmonic Masterworks Concert, Performing Arts Center, Tulsa, (918) OKC Philharmonic Classics Concert, Civic Center Music Hall, OKC, (405) Barbara Mandrell, Brady Theater, Tulsa, (918) Cinderella, Tulsa Ballet Theater, Chapman Music Hall, Tulsa, (918) Giselle, Ballet Oklahoma, Civic Center Music Hall, OKC. (405) Halloween with the High Class Brass, Lawton Philharmonic, Lawton, (405) The Four Freshmen, Fine Arts Auditorium, Tahlequah, (918) , ext Tulsa Philharmonic Masterworks Concerts, Performing Arts Center, Tulsa, (918) The Chestnut Brass, Scottish Rite Temple, Guthrie, (405) RODEO AND HORSE EVENT SEPTEMBER 4-5 OK Prison Rodeo, McAlester, (918) Rodeo of Champions, Elk City, (405) Labor Day Pasture Roping, Barrel Races and Calf Roping, Bushyhead Arena, Chelsea, (918) Festival of the Cowboy, Duncan, (405) Women's Nat'l Finals Rodeo, Lazy E Arena, Guthrie, (405) Justin Nat'l Team Penning Challenge, Lazy E Arena, Guthrie, (405) Oklahoma Today

FOR SALE SERVICES. BUSINESS. ETC by CAROL CASTOR Orlginal Oils & Pastels Llmited Edltlon Prlnts Note cards/postcards Comm~ss~ons Museum ShopsIG~ftshops1Mall Order 121 Jennle Lane.

65 FOR SALE SERVICES. BUSINESS. ETC by CAROL CASTOR Orlginal Oils & Pastels Llmited Edltlon Prlnts Note cards/postcards Comm~ss~ons Museum ShopsIG~ftshops1Mall Order 121 Jennle Lane.Vlnita, OK Full hook ups. One block south of 1-40, Exit 221, Okernah, OK. Police patrolled I ALARM SYSTEMS The alarm system of the future! Different from others. For usecity or country. More information 1 ~ Anti-Intrusion Devices, Inc. FISH FARMS Channd Catfish, Bass, Grass Carp. I I '1 - Koklahoma Adventure Guide Series" %$;. Six magazines- more than280 pages of LII-coIor vacation excitement! r- Breathtaking Autumn colors on Tal~rnena Scenic Drive in Le Flore County. Take in I OkZa8oma Today postage, handling and sales tax rates $0 to $ $2.00 $15.01 to $20...$2.50 $20.01 to $30... $3.00 $30.01 to $40...$4.00 $40.01 to $75...$7.00 $75.01 to $100...$10.00 (For orders exceeding $100, use figures from above for the additional amount.) FOR PACKAGES SENT TO A SEPARATE ADDRESS, add $1.50 per packa~e.per additional address. FOR OK1,AHOMA RESIDENTS, Please add 4.5%state sales tax, plus your local (city or county) tax; or add X I sales tax, then add postage and handling according to the chart above. '1'0 ORDER YOITR GIFTS, give us a call on our new toll-free number: Great Plains ~ o u n t r ~ A a' - 7- a'sgreat Plans Country offers -outh central Oklahoma's M Country offers WichitaMountains and the endlesshoizonof ArbucMeMountains, Turner Fans,ArbuckleW&rthe great plains. The Wichita Mountains National ness, LakeTexoma Lake ArkpcWe, Lake Murray WiMlifeRefuge, IndianCity U,S,A., the 600-nation and Wee Creek Reservoir-AWa. State parks, Festivalof Flags, Quartz Mountain Resort, State resorts,museumsandhistorichomes plus houseparks,lakesandmuseumsmgketheregionagreat boat vacations and world-famous striper fishing vacation destination add to the fun. d the IAIluMturn ll~~iiia tn lhnpillniuw- r, I ~ottheastoklahoma's Green country oms mc major lakes, cano~ing,scenic rivers, breathtaking drhres, diirseentertainmentahd richhistoryrangingfrom Mozartto ancientcivilizationsandthe end of the CherokeeTrail of Tears, the oldest miliry fartinoklahomaandthecosmopolitanamenitiesof l'ul~a buonwesr manomas mea barpelbountry offers the mysticalakbastercavernsand selenitecwti$ dig. Rodeos, museums, hiioric homes, Little Sahara sanddunes, Custer battle site, Raman Nosa Resort,Blackhksaandthe PioneerWomanstatue are good reasons to explore this region of Oklahoma. 405B *

OK Reining Horse Futurity, Hardy Murphy Coliseum, Ardmore, (405) 282-0730 Cheese and Sausage Festival, Stillwater, (405) 744-6060 Wheatheart Fall Fest, Tonkawa, (405) 628-2220 OCTOBER 2-3 OK Hills

66 OK Reining Horse Futurity, Hardy Murphy Coliseum, Ardmore, (405) Cheese and Sausage Festival, Stillwater, (405) Wheatheart Fall Fest, Tonkawa, (405) OCTOBER 2-3 OK Hills Championship Bull Riding, Hardy Murphy Coliseum, Ardmore, (405) OK Mule, Draft Horse and Buggy Sale, Hardy Murphy Coliseum, Ardmore, (918) Grand Nat'l &World Championship Morgan Horse SEPTEMBER Show, State Fairgrounds, OKC, (405) Cherokee Nat'l Holiday, Tahlequah, (918) Festival of the Horse, OKC Area, (405) Ottawa Powwow, Miami, (918) Ride The Wild Horse Trail Ride, Riley Donica's Wild 47 Choctaw Nation Labor Day Festival, Tuskahoma, Horse Trail Camp, Honobia, (918) (405) Prairie Circuit Finals Rodeo, Lazy E Arena, Guthrie, Seminole Nation Days Celebration, Mekusukey (405) Mission, Seminole, (405) BluebonnetTeam RopingCompetition, Hardy Murphy Powwow, Wyandotte, (918) Nov. 1 Coliseum, Ardmore, (405) Art Market and Intertribal Powwow, Okmulgee, SPRA Finals, State Fairgrounds, OKC, (405) (918) INDIAN EVENTS m & Indian Summer Festival, Community Center, I Bartlesville, (918) Chickasaw Festival, Tishomingo, (405) FAIRS AND FESTIVALS OCTOBER SEPTEMBER Black Leggins Society. Indian City USA, Anadarko, 5-6 Ethnic Festival, Krebs, (918) (405) Arts Festival Oklahoma, OKC, (405) Watermelon Festival, CIeo Springs, (405) I Autumn Magic, Downtown, Guthrie, (405) Chili and Blue Grass Festival, Downtown, Tulsa, (918) udial EVENTS 12 Calf Fry Festival and Cookoff, Craig County Fairgrounds, SEPTEMBER Vinita, (918) Chili Cook-Off, Eagle Park, Cache, (405) Oct. 4 State Fair of OK, State Fairgrounds, OKC, 5-7 Regional Hang Glider Competition, Talihina, (405) (405) Cotton Festival, Frederick, (405) Great Raft Race Chili Cook-off, River City Park, Sand 19 Oklahoma Scottish Gamesand Gathering, Manion Park, Springs, (918) Tulsa, (918) Cherokee Strip Celebration, Ponca City, 19 Peanut Festival, Downtown, Marlow, (405) (405) Fall Festival of the Arts, Elk City, (405) Cherokee Strip Days, Enid, (405) Oct. 4 Tulsa State Fair, Fairgrounds, Tulsa, (918) Cherokee Strip Run Celebration, Downtown, Perry, Bluegrass Festival, Duncan, (405) (405) Int'l Festival, Library Plaza, Lawton, (405) Founders' Day, Collinsville, (918) Art in the Park, Central Park, Ardmore, (405) Oct. 10 Weekend Bugling Elk Tours, Wichita Mountains Fallfest, Fuqua Park, Duncan, (405) Wildlife Refuge, Indiahoma, (405) Pelican Festival, Community Center, Grove, 16 Woods County Centennial Celebration, Downtown, (918) Alva, (405) Major County Threshing Bee, Fairview, OCTOBER (405) Cavanal Fall Festival, Poteau, (918) Gene Autry Birthday Celebration, Gene Autry, 3 Czech Festival, Yukon, (405) (405) Octoberfest, Marland Mansion, Ponca City, Route 66 Cruise, Elk City, (405) (405) Taylorsville Country Fair, Perkins, (405) OCTOBER 9-10 Heritage Festival, Shattuck, (405) Santa Fe Trail Tour, Boise City, (405) Shortgrass Art Festival, Altus, (405) Fall Foliage Walk, Wichita Mountains Wildlife 10 Spirit of the People Fall Fest, OKC, (800) Refuge, Indiahoma, (405) Grapes of Wrath Festival, Sallisaw, (918) Hot Air Balloon Exhibition, Airport, Ada, Tahlequah, LT. Festival, Tahlequah, (918) (405) Pumpkin Festival of the Arts, Anadarko, Cabin Creek Battle, Langley, (918) (405) OSU Homecoming Walkaround, Stillwater, Greek Festival, OKC, (405) (405) Oktoberfest, Tulsa, (918) ,28-30 Halloween Tour of Terror, Alabaster Cavern State Robbers Cave Fall Festival, Wilbunon, (918) Park, Freedom, (405) Sorghum Day, Seminole Nation Museum, Wewoka, (405) Ahough the infomution in the cu/endur is nrrrent, dutes and Nmes curl change Fall Foliage Festival, Talihina, (918) without notice. Please check in urk,unce bbefom unending any event. Oklahoma Today

67 Celebrate Cherokee Strip Heritage Nineteen ninety-three marks rne 100-year anniversary of the. Great Land Rush-most recently depicted on screen in the film ';Far and Awayn-that opened Oklahoma's Cherokee Strip to settlement. Just in'time for the celebration, Oklahoma Today is commemorating the h~storic, event with th~soriginal T-shirt design. Order yours today! - Colors: Red, White, Black, Purple and Green. Sizes: Small, Medium, Large, Extra-large and Extra-extra-large. $ , n - Remember 19%. The Year of the Indian Due to customer demand, Oklahoma Today has taken this popular T-shirt and banner design and creat'ed a l~mitededition wall poster. 20" x 34"...$3.... M-a~inipmve -In time for autirmn,' 0klahoma ~oda bffering agrktly improved Native ~rnerica sweatshirt. We've taken our popular designs and put them on a mttod 2 1 poly shirt with inset sleeves for a heavier. :>p -androomier feel. They're pres L..90/10 cott~nlpolysweatshirt.. OK NativeAmerica Buffalo (Re OK NativeAmericaEagle (BI OK NaFe America Big Horseljlpi Sizes S, M, t,xl.... : $25 XXL un_available, but these ~ hi ~ run t6hrge. Sony, butme ~oldenrod;earof the Indian TipilLittle Horse isno longer available as sweatshirt. It is available as a T-shirt - -. are avafiable fo,.,. the same styles anc irts: Also availat....

and led Jimmy to the prison office. There Jimmy was given an important He had been sent to prison to stay for four years.

O. H e n r y p IN THE PRISON SHOE-SHOP, JIMMY VALENTINE was busily at work making shoes. A prison officer came into the shop, and led Jimmy to the prison office. There Jimmy was given an important paper.